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Accounting rules. If the credits last indefinitely, any unused credits cannot be counted as revenue. Ran into this at my last company when we signed a big contract and gave them hundreds of thousands of dollars in non-expiring credits. Our accountant went nuts when we told him.
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That’s not how accounting works. There’s no such thing as a probabilistic liability.
Yes there is. See provisions and contingent liabilities.
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> Why don't they count it as revenue the moment the credits are issued? Because the corresponding service hasn't been rendered yet. Conceptually you want the revenue and the costs to generate it recognised at roughly same time else your P/L number is volatile/meaningless
The IRS allows companies to choose between cash-based and accrual-based accounting. Most companies choose accrual-based accounting. It's much more complicated, and one of the things about it is that you don't don't get to count money collected as revenue until the customer actually "uses" it to buy something from you. That's just the way that goes. Remember - the company chose this method of accounting. If you form a…
I don't know if Anthropic needs to file statements with the SEC, but they might be trying to get their books aligned for it.
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Yes there is. See provisions and contingent liabilities.
Neither of these show up either on a balance sheet or cash flow statement. If a contingent liability is probable, you have to record it as a liability per GAAP.