The L-1A new-office standard concerns support for the qualifying position within one year of petition approval. A deposit date should not replace that regulatory reference point.
Track commercial and immigration milestones separately
Keep the actual approval and initial authorized period visible. Review later eligibility and extension evidence rather than assuming the initial funding plan guarantees continued approval. A deposit date marks a financial milestone, not the regulatory reference point that actually matters, because the projected support timeline for a new office depends on evidence such as the nature and scope of the planned operation, its organizational structure, its financial goals, the size of the investment, and the foreign organization's own financial ability to support it, considered together rather than reduced to a single payment date.
Reviewers assess those factors at the time of the initial filing to judge whether the operation is genuinely likely to support the qualifying position within the allowed period, not to track when funds actually moved. When the time comes to extend the arrangement, the evidence needed is different again: proof that the entity is now actually doing business, and that the underlying qualifying relationship and employment both continue, rather than a repeat of the original funding projection. Keep those two evidentiary stages, the initial projection and the later proof of actual operations, clearly separate, since satisfying one does not automatically satisfy the other.