Create draft orders and invoices
Build a manual order for a customer, hold stock while you finalize it, and send an invoice they can pay online.
Not every sale starts at your checkout. Draft orders let you build an order by hand – for a phone order, an email inquiry, or a deal you negotiated – with your own prices, discounts, and payment terms, then either charge it, invoice it, or mark it paid yourself.
Start a draft order
Open Orders → Create order. Nothing is saved yet – add items, set prices, and fill in whatever you know so far. The first time you click Save draft, the draft is created and numbered (D1, D2, and so on). If you navigate away with unsaved changes, you're asked first.
Every draft you haven't finished lives under the Drafts tab on your Orders page, split into Open and Completed.
Add items
- Catalog products – search your catalog and add them like you would to a cart, with their usual price as a starting point.
- Custom items – for anything that isn't in your catalog, like a service, a repair, or a one-off piece. Give it a name, a price, a quantity, and a tax rate (or mark it not taxable). Toggle Needs shipping off for something like a service fee that shouldn't count toward shipping.
You can edit the price and quantity of any line as you build the draft.
Discounts and coupons
- Discount a line – a percentage or a fixed amount off a single item, with an optional reason that's visible to the client.
- Discount the order – a percentage or fixed amount taken off the whole order, applied after any coupon.
- Apply a coupon – enter one of your store's coupon codes. It's checked against the draft's items just like it would be at checkout, and its use is only counted once the draft becomes a real order.
Shipping and tax
Pick one of your store's shipping methods, or add a custom rate with your own name and price for a one-off delivery arrangement. Turn Charge taxes off if the client pays tax-free prices – for example, a wholesale or export deal.
Customer, note, tags, and PO number
Add the customer (an existing one or a new email and address), an internal note, any tags you use to organize orders, and a purchase order number if your client gave you one.
Hold stock
Turn on Hold stock to set the draft's items aside while you finalize things with the client, so you don't oversell while you wait. Pick how long to hold it for – up to 365 days out. The hold updates automatically if you change products or quantities, and you can Release stock by hand at any time. If you don't create the order before the hold expires, the stock goes back on sale automatically and the draft stays open.
Note: Saving a draft never reserves stock on its own – only turning on Hold stock does.
Send an invoice
Instead of charging the client yourself, click Send invoice. They get an emailed link to a pay page with the draft's items and total, where they can pay by card or bank transfer (whichever you accept). The draft stays editable and shows Invoice sent – if you change something, resend it or Copy link to share the current version yourself. The order is created the moment they pay.
Turn the draft into an order
When you're ready to finish the draft, you have three ways to settle it:
| Option | What happens |
|---|---|
| Mark as paid | Creates the order as paid immediately – use this when you've already been paid, for example in cash or by a transfer outside YNS. |
| Payment due later | Creates the order unpaid but ready to fulfill, on payment terms you choose: due on receipt, due on fulfillment, within a set number of days (7, 15, 30, 45, 60, or 90), or on a fixed date. The order shows as Overdue once the due date passes, but it's never automatically canceled. |
| Send invoice (see above) | The order is only created once the client pays through their invoice link. |
Whichever path you use, the order behaves like any other from then on – fulfillment, refunds, and invoices all work the same way. See View and manage orders.
Duplicate a draft, or start one from an order
- Duplicate a draft to reuse it as a starting point for a similar order.
- Open any existing order and choose Create draft from order to copy its items, customer, addresses, note, tags, and PO number into a new draft. Discounts and shipping aren't carried over, and bundles, sets, and subscription lines can't be copied – you'll see how many items were skipped.
History
Every draft keeps its own activity timeline, and you can leave internal comments on it just like on a regular order. Once a draft becomes an order, the order's own timeline shows that it was created from a draft.
Tip: Draft orders left untouched for a year are cleaned up automatically.
FAQ
Does a draft order use up an order number?
No. A draft has its own D number and only becomes a real order – with its own order number – once you mark it paid, set payment terms, or the client pays the invoice.
Can I change a draft after I've sent the invoice?
Yes. The draft stays editable while the invoice is unpaid – make your changes and resend the invoice, or copy the updated link to share it yourself.
What happens to a stock hold if I never finish the draft?
It's released automatically once it expires, and the products go back on sale. The draft itself isn't deleted – it just sits in Drafts → Open without held stock.
Can I use draft orders for wholesale clients?
Yes – a draft order is one way to type up an order for any client by hand, wholesale included. If you're setting up recurring negotiated pricing and a self-serve ordering panel for a business buyer, see Sell wholesale to business buyers instead.
Does an invoice from a draft order count as my numbered invoice?
The invoice link a client pays through shows the draft's items and total, but it's not the same as the numbered, sequential invoice document – generate that from the resulting order once it's paid. See Generate invoices.
What's next
- See how orders created from drafts show up in your list in View and manage orders.
- Issue a proper numbered invoice once the order is paid in Generate invoices.
- Set up negotiated pricing and self-serve ordering for repeat buyers in Sell wholesale to business buyers.