The executed lease with any amendments, the contractor's scope and signed agreement, permit applications and approvals, equipment purchase orders and delivery notes, paid invoices, and bank statements showing the transfers. Include the deposit receipts and any escrow instructions. Together these show what was bought, by whom, when, and whether the payment can still be recovered.
Keep the payer's name consistent
Payments made personally, by a foreign parent company, or by a relative complicate an otherwise clean file. Where possible, pay from the U.S. entity's account and record any capital contribution that funded it.
If a payment had to come from elsewhere, document the loan or contribution and the reason. Also check that the lease, the permits and the equipment orders all name the same entity; mismatched names on three documents create three questions. Assemble the payment file in date order and reconcile it to the bank statements before anyone reads it for content.
Each entry should show the payer, the recipient, the amount, the date, and the document that authorised it. Where money moved between related parties or was converted from another currency, keep the intermediate advices and the rate applied. Consistency of names across the lease, the permits, the equipment orders, and the bank account removes questions that are otherwise expensive to answer in writing later.
Where a payment was unavoidably made personally, document the capital contribution or loan that carried it into the enterprise, using the instrument itself rather than a note describing it. Store the reconciliation with the file.