Preserve Evidence and Establish a Baseline

01Establish the baseline

An anomaly is only visible against a baseline. Spend the first weeks constructing a plain inventory of how the business normally moves money: every account, every recurring transfer, every vendor paid more than once, every person with signatory authority. One row per item. No conclusions yet — the pattern is what matters.

• Every bank, merchant, and payment account, with whose name appears on each.
• Recurring transfers between accounts, especially round-number and month-end movements.
• Every vendor paid in the last twelve months, ranked by total paid.
• Every individual with check-signing, wire-initiation, or bookkeeping access.
• The normal cadence of deposits, payroll, and owner draws.

02Preserve, do not alter

From the moment a concern arises, every document gets a source, a date received, and an unaltered original file. Rename nothing. Crop nothing. Keep a simple log. Evidence that cannot be authenticated is a story, and stories lose.

If your operating agreement gives you inspection rights, exercise them in writing and keep the request. If it does not, do not improvise — a record obtained improperly can contaminate the entire case.