Payment records are relevant but must be understood with the actual relationship and applicable requirements.
Read the reason for the payment
Do not assume every invoice or transfer proves employee service. Keep compensation history distinct from the professional and government costs of preparing the transfer.
Cost planning should follow the evidentiary gap, not an assumption that specialized knowledge can be purchased through presentation. List filing and preparation fees separately from translations, controlled-document redactions, travel, and the company’s ordinary project costs. Then ask which expense helps establish a required fact. A new training slide has little value if it does not show what the transferee actually learned; a carefully prepared chronology may be more useful than expensive marketing material. The first review should identify whether a proposed US project has enough defined work to explain why this employee is needed, without treating project revenue as proof of eligibility. Keep the foreign employer’s compensation records distinct from invoices paid to an unrelated contractor. The person needs a continuous qualifying foreign employment year in the applicable three-year period, and L-1B time generally cannot exceed five years. Hypothetical example: a laboratory-software company considers commissioning a glossy product video for its analyst’s case. The better record is the analyst’s version-control history, training assignments, and the US implementation plan showing the specific problem she will solve. If those records do not support advanced company knowledge, the video adds cost but not proof.