This page belongs to the service credit adjudication guide. It is a tree for one decision: who can say yes to a conversation about these records, and which yes belongs to someone else.
Start at the credit approval and climb
Each step asks one question. Answer it in conversation; no ticket, worksheet or credit note needs to be opened.
1. Who approves a service credit today?
- Usually the commercial operations head, sometimes a VP of customer success, with the controller confirming the amount. This person is the sponsor.
- If approvals moved between teams over the years, note who held them in each period; the history may need more than one voice.
2. Are the credits governed by a public SLA or by negotiated customer terms?
- Public only: some providers publish their SLA as a web page anyone can read, as AWS does for compute. The terms themselves are not confidential, though each customer's claims still are.
- Negotiated: enterprise order forms often carry custom uptime targets and credit tables. Go to step 3.
AWS3. Do customer agreements restrict use of incident and billing details?
- Likely yes for enterprise contracts. General counsel reads them before anything is proposed. The page on SaaS customer data and AI training rights sets out the questions counsel usually asks.
4. Who can authorize a discussion about licensing company records?
- The CEO, usually with the CFO preparing the case. If a board or investor consent rule covers new revenue lines, see whether licensing data requires board approval.
5. End: SourceX rights review. The partner's path ends at an authorized introduction. Which records are included, excluded or de-identified is decided after it.
Three kinds of record, three kinds of permission
| Record | Whose information is inside | Who decides whether it can be discussed | Likely condition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Status incidents and incident reviews | The company's own operations | CEO, with the engineering lead confirming coverage | Usually the lightest; security details may be removed |
| SLA versions and credit worksheets | Company terms, sometimes negotiated per customer | CEO, after counsel reads the customer agreements | Customer-specific terms may need removal |
| Claims, approvals and credit notes | Customer names, contacts, amounts | CEO with counsel | Customer identities de-identified or excluded |
The status page side is the most clearly the company's own. A component in partial outage, in Statuspage's terms, is completely broken for a subset of customers, but the status record itself names components, not customers. The billing side is the reverse: a credit note adjusts a finalized invoice for a named customer, and Stripe's reason field (duplicate, fraudulent, order_change or product_unsatisfactory) says nothing about SLA logic, so the customer-specific reasoning sits in tickets and email that counsel will want to review.
Statuspage
StripeWhat each person in a SaaS company can and cannot approve
- Commercial operations head. Can describe the process, the volume of claims and refusals, and where approvals live. Cannot usually approve a licensing discussion alone. Ask: "How far back can you follow a credit to its incident?"
- Controller or CFO. Owns the billing records and makes the case for a new revenue line. Typically the business sponsor; the CEO signs. Ask: "Would you take a first call about licensing?"
- General counsel. Reads customer agreements and confidentiality clauses. Advises, and can narrow the scope or block it. Ask: "Do enterprise contracts restrict reuse of incident or credit details?"
- Site reliability or engineering lead. Knows where incident reviews live and how far back. Technical access only.
- Billing administrator. Can export every credit note. That is access, not authority.
- CEO. Authorizes the discussion and signs; in smaller companies, often the founder.
Advisors who reach the company through its bank will find the same sponsor-and-signer pattern in how a commercial banker introduces a client opportunity.
Branches the partner cannot close
- Customer terms. Whether a particular enterprise agreement permits reuse is a legal reading, not something to estimate.
- Proactive versus claimed credits. If the company sometimes credited customers without a claim, the reasoning may sit in places nobody has cataloged.
- Security content. Incident reviews can describe infrastructure weaknesses; what is removed is part of data preparation.
- Demand and terms. Whether these records match current dataset demand and whether any offer follows are unknown until SourceX reviews them. The why data rights matter page explains why rights come first.
SourceX licenses approved business data directly from companies for AI training and evaluation, and manages the agreement, rights review, data preparation, delivery and payout.
Authority check for a SaaS finance advisor
Before submitting, confirm three things:
- The sponsor agrees. The commercial operations head confirms the records exist across the status platform, helpdesk and billing, and will raise the idea with the CFO.
- The signer is named. The CEO has agreed to a first call, or the sponsor has committed to ask.
- The company fits. 50+ full-time employees at peak (contractors excluded), a documented operating history, rights to license the records and an authorized contact. Companies in the U.S., Canada and the EU qualify, as do companies in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, South Africa, Latin America, the UAE and Saudi Arabia when at least 90% of the data is in English.
Partners sign the Channel Partner Agreement before submitting introductions; the first valid introduction within the 90-day window is credited when the company submits a verified application. The worked one-tier outage case helps the sponsor explain the records to the CFO, the system map answers coverage questions, and the referral brief template gives you the note to send.
Next step
Refer a company. Earn up to $100,000. Default reward: 25% of Actual Supplier Payout, capped at $100,000 cumulatively per referred company. Eligibility and payment conditions apply, and a signed Schedule A or addendum can differ. A lead, meeting or signature alone does not trigger payment.
When the tree ends at a CEO willing to take the call, register as a partner, confirm the company against who qualifies, and read the program terms before you introduce them.