Signed supplier quotes and purchase orders, the lease or letter of intent, incorporation and ownership records, licence applications, insurance binders, business bank statements, and receipts for equipment already bought. A market-based revenue projection with its assumptions written out completes the picture. Together these show commitment and direction where profit-and-loss statements do not yet exist.
Make the projection defensible line by line
A forecast is evidence only if someone can follow how it was built. State the pricing, the assumed volume, the source of each cost, and the staffing the plan implies. Avoid figures chosen to clear an imagined jobs threshold; there is no universal ten-job requirement, and an invented headcount weakens everything around it.
Keep the projection consistent with the lease size, the equipment list, and the opening inventory already ordered. One further reconciliation is worth completing before anything is submitted. Every number in the projection should trace to a document already in the file: the lease for the rent line, equipment quotes for the capital line, signed supply terms for cost of goods, and the wage assumptions behind payroll.
Where a figure has no supporting document, either obtain one or mark it plainly as an estimate and state how it was derived. Hypothetical example: a founder opening a marine electronics workshop finds that three of eleven cost lines rest on verbal quotes, and converting those to written quotes takes four days while removing the weakest part of the plan. A projection nobody can follow is not evidence, however carefully it has been formatted.