An affiliate who appears earlier in a customer journey before another affiliate or channel ends up converting the sale on the last click.
A lot of networks track additional sale metrics beyond the last click. These types of metrics are used to show value in affiliates at the start of the user journey (typically a content site) and can often be used to reward these affiliates for the part they play. Conversions which come earlier in the customer journey could be called anything from an assisted conversion to an influenced sale.
Example: A content publisher starts a customer journey, but the last click of the journey is a voucher publisher, the voucher publisher is attributed the sale but the content publisher is attributed the assist
