# Billing issue triage SOP

Version: 1.0  
Owner: Billing support and security/data owner  
Review cadence: Monthly and after payment, identity, authorization, retention, or policy changes

## Purpose and boundary

Create a safe, source-linked evidence packet for billing support. Triage does not approve refunds or credits, decide disputes or fraud, interpret tax/legal obligations, alter contracts, restrict accounts, or request payment-card data in a ticket.

## Trigger and completion

- Start: a new or materially updated ticket is possibly billing-related.
- Complete: a redacted triage packet reaches an eligible authorized queue, or a named exception owns the case.
- Idempotency key: `{ticket_id}:{source_message_id}:{billing_triage_policy_version}`.

## Required inputs

- Original-message reference in approved storage
- Authenticated session and trusted customer/account lookup
- Billing, subscription and processor event references
- Current authorization, secure-data, entitlement and routing policies
- Classifier version, issue taxonomy and confidence gates

## Procedure

1. Register the source reference without echoing message content into logs.
2. Before summarizing, copying or forwarding, run approved controls for unintended payment-card data.
3. If suspected, stop propagation and invoke the organization's secure handling procedure. Do not invent deletion/redaction actions.
4. Resolve identity with trusted internal IDs. On missing/conflicting identity, restrict billing detail and route to identity resolution.
5. Classify bounded issue types: invoice copy, failed payment, possible duplicate charge, refund/credit request, tax/legal document, pricing/contract, suspected fraud/access.
6. Retrieve only permitted source facts and deep links with least-privileged access. Record source timestamp and field provenance.
7. Apply hard boundaries. Money, contract, access, tax and fraud decisions require an authorized person.
8. Present ambiguous cases to billing support with original reference, evidence spans, source facts and missing information.
9. Commit a minimum-data packet and route it to an eligible billing owner.
10. Link any authorized decision from its source system; never represent triage as approval.

## Exceptions

- `secure_data_handling`: possible full payment-card data
- `identity_resolution`: no single trusted account
- `billing_source_recovery`: source unavailable or stale
- `billing_policy_owner`: policy absent or conflicting
- `billing_specialist_review`: classifier uncertainty or several issue types
- `protected_fraud_security`: suspected fraud or account takeover

## Measurement and audit

Track time to verified triage, complete first handoffs, evidence handbacks, identity exceptions, secure-data events, corrections, blocked unauthorized actions and source failures. Retain source references, detection outcome without matched secrets, identity provenance, field sources, access events, policy/model versions, route and authorized-decision reference. Apply approved access and retention controls.

## Rollback

Disable billing-system retrieval and model acceptance. Preserve safe intake and route tickets to an authorized billing queue after the payment-data and identity gates.