The purchase agreement and escrow instructions, the seller's financial records, and a complete source-of-funds trail. A business plan explains those documents; it cannot stand in for them.
Three files, assembled in parallel
The agreement should identify the parties, the price, exactly what is being bought, and a condition tied to the immigration decision rather than to a calendar date. Escrow instructions should show that the money leaves the buyer's control and reaches the seller on approval. The seller's package — three years of statements and returns, the payroll register with hours, an equipment list separating owned from leased, supplier and customer contracts, and the premises lease — supports substantiality, the operating nature of the enterprise and the marginality analysis. The source-of-funds file traces every dollar from where it was earned to where it now sits: sale proceeds with the sale documents, mortgage advances with the loan agreement, savings with statements covering the period. Add the U.S. entity's corporate documents and the ownership record establishing treaty nationality, then write the plan around what exists.
Hypothetical example: a trampoline-park operator is acquiring a business whose equipment lease requires the lessor's consent. The first review should assemble the purchase agreement, lease, consent condition, inventory schedule, bank transfers, corporate records, tax returns, and staffing forecast in transaction order. Each record answers a discrete question: ownership, commitment, source, operating reality, or scale. Resolve missing consents before relying on the acquisition price. The usual document failure is calling a complete business purchase ‘committed’ while a core asset or premises right cannot actually pass to the investor.