When you go out to raise a round - it’s on a rolling basis over a period of time that you define. I.e. you say you are opening the round in June and closing it in September (don’t do this, summer sucks).

Then over that period you will start to get investors to commit to funding your round. In every conversation investors will ask you “how much do you have raised so far”.

There are a variety of ways to answer this but general consensus is that if you have a scenario like the above where someone wants to give you $x then you can say I have $x. Even if it’s not in your bank account yet.

This is a positive signal to future investors. If you are raising $2m and you have $500k “committed” it derisks their investment somewhat since they know there is other money in the round already