No. Spending on tools does not replace qualifying knowledge, foreign service or the corporate relationship.
Separate business procurement from immigration fees
Confirm what each charge funds. Neither a licence purchase nor an outside certification guarantees the outcome.
Put the course invoice beside payroll and travel records: a training expense does not establish a continuous full-time foreign employment year in the relevant preceding three years. The predictable additional spending in an offsite case is legal and commercial review of the affiliate’s customer agreements, because those agreements have to say what the petition says. Separate internal staff time for retrieving training, engineering, and project records from legal preparation, translations, corporate documents, and current government charges. Budget staff time, translation, technical explanation, professional review, and official charges as separate categories; confirm current government instructions rather than inserting a filing-fee figure. The assessment should address qualifying specialized knowledge rather than an invented requirement to prove every U.S. recruitment effort failed. On the immigration side, budget the Form I-129 fee, any premium-processing charge and the employer-side surcharges from the USCIS fee schedule, Form G-1055, checked on the filing date. Ask specifically what the assessment covers: whether it includes reviewing the qualifying year abroad, the specialized knowledge claim and the new-operation requirements, or only the last of those.