With payroll records showing continuous employment and a day-by-day travel log showing which days were spent in the United States; those days are excluded from the count but do not break the year.
Two records read together: the payroll and the passport
A Torbay general manager who has been on the logistics company's payroll for six years easily proves continuous employment, but the L-1 rule asks for one continuous year of qualifying employment abroad within the three years before the petition, and periods spent in the United States on business are not counted toward it. The petition should therefore include payroll records for the three-year window, the manager's travel history assembled from passport stamps, airline records and the company's travel log, and a simple table subtracting the U.S. days from each twelve-month period to show that at least one such period contains a full year of days abroad. If the trips were long enough that no twelve-month period works, the petition should be delayed until one does. The employment during the year must also have been in a managerial or executive capacity, so the manager's Canadian job description, organizational chart and performance records should be included to show what was being managed.
Hypothetical example: a Torbay wind-turbine service company sends its operations head to the United States for several two-week installations. The payroll proves continuous Canadian employment, while flight records identify days that cannot count as employment abroad. A reviewer can build the qualifying twelve-month window only after reconciling both records. If the window is short, the practical decision is to wait until a full qualifying period exists rather than file a petition that assumes all payroll days count.