Several years of financial statements and tax filings, payroll records showing real employees, the equipment list with titles and valuations, the customer contracts, the lease, and any licences the business holds. Projections prepared by the seller are advertising, and a file built on them is difficult to defend.
Historic figures answer the questions projections dodge
The elements this route tests are all evidenced by the same due-diligence material a careful buyer would want anyway. Payroll records show the business is real, operating and more than marginal. Financial statements and filings establish the purchase price as a credible denominator for substantiality.
Equipment titles and the lease show what is actually being bought and support the valuation. Where a seller cannot produce these, the difficulty is commercial before it is legal, and it should change the price rather than be worked around. Hypothetical example: a buyer looking at a small-engine repair shop is told the business turns over a healthy sum, with the figure offered verbally and no statements produced because the retiring owner kept the books informally.
There is nothing to file, nothing to value the deal against, and no way to show the enterprise is not marginal. Where the records are genuinely absent, the honest options are a lower price reflecting that risk or a different target altogether.