 the other way that you might look at a delayed credit would be a situation for example usually you create an invoice and then you receive the payment but you might have a situation where you've received the payment first possibly like getting a down payment on a sale that you're going to make so now you've got the money first and accounting terminology we call that basically an unearned revenue situation usually but and we'll talk more about unearned revenue in the future but usually if you get paid first you want to record it as a liability