A draft order is an order placed from the Admin panel in Shopify.
You can create orders for your customers and send them invoices from the Shopify admin or the Shopify app. The orders that you create on behalf of your customers are named draft orders. Draft orders are similar to the orders that your customers create for themselves. A draft order is converted to an order when you accept payment for it.
Draft orders are useful when you need to do the following tasks:
- Accept payment for an order that you make over the phone, in person, or elsewhere. When you accept payment for your draft order, an order is created for it on the Orders page.
- Send invoices to customers to pay with a secure checkout link.
- Use custom items to represent additional costs or products that aren't displayed in your inventory.
- Re-create orders manually from any of your active sales channels.
- Sell products at discount or wholesale rates.
- Take pre-orders.
- Save the orders as a draft and resume working on it later. If you save your order as a draft, then you can update it later from the Drafts page in your Shopify admin.
-- From Shopify Documentation