Agency Governance

Client ownership

Agencies should decide whether the client or agency owns provider credentials, budgets, approvals, and support escalation. Document the decision before installing SophMate on a client site.

Repeatable rollout

Create a standard checklist for installation, provider setup, roles, Knowledge Base import, Theme Assistant review, workflow staging, and diagnostics. The agency use case explains the buyer scenario, and the agency governance tutorial provides the practical setup path.

Reporting

Use audit logs, diagnostics, approvals, and client presentation notes to explain what SophMate did and what still needs client decision. Do not expose private provider keys, internal prompts, or unrelated client data in reports.

Owner and cadence

• Primary owner: account owner, agency lead, privacy owner, or operations lead depending on risk area.
• Review cadence: monthly, after incidents, after staff changes, and before client or stakeholder reporting.
• Escalate when ownership, approval, privacy, backup, audit, or client-reporting decisions are unclear.

Production checklist

• Create client-specific provider ownership, budgets, role maps, Knowledge Base sources, approval rules, reports, and support paths.
• Avoid cloning sensitive prompts, provider keys, customer policies, or support details across unrelated client sites.
• Assign owners for approval policy, audit review, retention, privacy handling, backup validation, and support escalation.
• Keep governance decisions visible in onboarding notes so agencies, developers, support leads, and store owners do not invent separate rules.

Acceptance checks

• Each client can see what SophMate may do, who approves it, and how results are reported.
• Agency operators can separate internal notes from client-facing evidence.
• A reviewer can identify the accountable owner for customer, commerce, theme, privacy, and provider decisions.
• The team has a repeatable monthly review for budgets, audit events, permissions, retention, and unresolved incidents.

Common mistakes

• Treating governance as a one-time setup task instead of a recurring review of roles, budgets, approvals, retention, and audit records.
• Sharing diagnostics, screenshots, or client reports before removing secrets and unrelated private data.

Related operations

• Review the agency use case.
• Follow the agency governance tutorial.
• Use Backup and Staging Workflow before high-risk changes.
• Use Regulated Claims and Legal Review before publishing sensitive claims.
• Use Access Offboarding and Seat Review after staff, contractor, or agency changes.
• Use Privacy and Data Retention before sharing support evidence.
• Use Privacy Export and Erase Requests before handling requester data.
• Use WooCommerce High-Risk Actions before store-changing work.
• Use Personalization Privacy Review before visitor targeting launches.
• Use Storefront Panel Consent Review before launching visitor-facing panels.