Not by itself. The case generally needs one continuous year of qualifying employment abroad within the relevant three-year period. The legal employer, actual duties, physical presence and relevant interruptions must be considered.
Use a complete timeline
Compare payroll dates with travel and work-location records. A Canadian payroll entry does not turn work physically performed in the United States into foreign employment. For a new-office L-1A, the qualifying foreign year must have involved managerial or executive work.
Ask counsel to assess travel and status history rather than using a simple anniversary date as the filing trigger. A payroll year is a starting point rather than a conclusion, and three things need checking against it. Where was the person actually working during that year, since payroll location and work location can differ.
Which entity employed them, since a group may run payroll centrally while the employing entity for these purposes is another company. And in what capacity did they work, since the employment abroad generally must have been managerial, executive or in a specialized-knowledge capacity, and a year spent in a different kind of role does not assist however continuous it was. Build a complete timeline covering all three dimensions before drawing any conclusion.
Where the answer to any of them is unclear, that is the question to resolve first, since the rest of the preparation depends on it.