What is unearned revenue?
Some businesses work by having their customers pay in advance for services, which translates into unearned revenue for those businesses. Unearned revenue is money that is received by a business before goods or services are provided. Another way to look at it is prepaid revenue.
For example, let's say a landscaping company charges its customers $200 for five lawn-cutting services and its customers are required to prepay the $200 upfront. As a result of this prepayment, the landscaping company now has a liability to its customers that's equal to the revenue earned from the actual performance of the services in question.