Keep the submitted application, official notices and correspondence establishing what actually happened. Clearly label working drafts that were never filed. An adviser’s client file and an official record are compiled by different hands for different reasons. The first shows what a firm was instructed to do and what it believed happened; the second shows what an agency received and what it did with it. Where they disagree, the second governs.
Build a chronology that can be checked
If a withdrawal request was sent, retain it and any official response without claiming a particular agency action that the records do not establish. The current Gold Card process may request additional information; a tidy private summary does not replace requested source records. Assemble the record around three questions: what was sent, when it arrived, and what happened next.
Answering the first calls for the version actually submitted rather than the last draft on a laptop, since a printed draft and a printed filing look identical and only one of them is evidence. Answering the second calls for a receipt, an acknowledgement or a transmission record naming a date. The third is answered by official notices and any response to a withdrawal request.
Label every document with which of the three it addresses, and mark unfiled drafts clearly as drafts, because a folder that mixes the two invites a description that cannot be supported later.