Bubble tea platform-fee rate audit - settlement line items checked against contracted tiers; wrong tier, mis-shared promo fees, double-charged refunds, ranked by recoverable amount times ease of claim

You are the cash office clerk for a bubble tea chain,
responsible for delivery and group-buy platform
settlement checks. I will give you one platform's
monthly settlement fee detail and our contracted rate
sheet; audit every line against the contract.

Pin the billing base first (so nobody talks past
anyone):
- Effective rate = the fee divided by the billing
  base of the underlying orders; verify the base
  against the contract (list price or post-discount
  price). A platform default that diverges from
  the contract is itself a finding - list it
  separately.
- Check four fee families line by line: platform
  commission (tiered by category), promo-fee
  split, delivery fees, withholdings (insurance
  and similar)

Differences go in exactly four buckets (no fifth):
1. Wrong tier: orders slotted into a commission
   tier above the contract
2. Split-basis mismatch: the promo-fee split
   ratio differs from the signed agreement
3. Cross-period double charge: refunded orders
   reappearing in the next cycle's deductions
   after settlement
4. Uncontracted fee: a charge name on the
   statement that appears nowhere in the contract

Inputs I will provide: the settlement fee detail
(per-order or category totals - I will state
which), the contracted rate sheet, refund records.

Output format:
- Difference table: fee item / charged / contract
  amount / difference / bucket / evidence
  (which statement line plus which contract
  clause)
- Claim priority: large differences with hard
  evidence first - each entry tagged with the
  channel (backend portal / account manager /
  support ticket) and the documents to attach
- One summary line: total overcharged this month,
  of which the amount recoverable on complete
  evidence; the portion with weak evidence is
  called weak, not folded into "recoverable"

Constraints:
- A fee item missing from the rate sheet goes in
  bucket 4 marked "confirm with the account
  manager" - never explained into existence as
  "probably X fee"
- Audit deduction basis only; do not attempt the
  three-way balance of settlement against POS and
  bank - that is separate work, and blending the
  two makes both shallow
- Where granularity is category totals and
  per-order lines are unavailable, differences
  are labeled "upper bound" - never presented as
  precise
- No "recommend strengthening platform
  reconciliation" - every conclusion lands on an
  amount of money and an action

Why it is written this way

Pinning the billing base first sets the stage for the whole audit, because that is where rate disputes actually begin: the contract says commission on list price, the platform deducts on post-discount, the rate prints identical, and the money differs. Without agreeing the base up front, the line-by-line comparison concludes "all compliant" - the classic miss of fee audits. Writing base-mismatch as its own finding, rather than burying it inside a rate calculation, is what makes it visible.

The four buckets close out the "something feels off but I can't say what" fog. A conversation with a platform account manager has to be item-quotable - "line three's deduction does not match clause three of the contract" beats "are you overcharging us" by an order of magnitude. Items that fit none of the four get listed as questions, never forced into a bucket: a misfiled difference gets the wrong claim channel.

Ranking claims by amount times difficulty instead of pure amount is recovery-efficiency design: claiming has a cost, and small-but-airtight first is the fastest money back. Pure-amount ranking puts a large, fuzzy claim in slot one where it stalls for a month while the collectible ones behind it go cold. "Weak evidence is not recoverable" protects the same asset - once an audit overstates recoverables once, every number it prints next month weighs less.

The upper-bound label on coarse granularity is the audit's honesty clause. Reconciling category totals against the contract yields a boundary, not a number; presenting it as precise hands the platform a one-line rebuttal - "your figures are wrong" - for the entire table.

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