Save an invoice as a draft
Every sales invoice starts life as a draft. A draft is a work-in-progress version you can change as often as you like before it becomes a finalised record. This guide explains what a draft is and what you can do with it.
Before you begin
- You save a draft simply by selecting Save Draft when creating an invoice.
What a draft is
A Draft invoice is:
- Fully editable. You can change the customer, dates, currency (until you add lines), lines, discount, tax and notes at any time. See Edit a draft invoice.
- Not yet in your accounts. A draft has no effect on your general ledger — no receivable, no revenue and no VAT are recorded. Your reports do not include it.
- Not visible to your customer. Drafts cannot be emailed or shared, and no online link exists for them.
- Not yet numbered for good. The invoice number shown on a draft is provisional; the permanent number is fixed when you issue.
- Deletable. Because it has no accounting impact, a draft can simply be deleted. Open the invoice, select More, then Delete. (Once an invoice is issued you can no longer delete it — you void it instead.)
What happens next
The natural next step is to issue the invoice. Issuing finalises the draft: it assigns the permanent number, records the sale in your accounts and makes the invoice available to send to the customer.
Important notes
Note: Saving a draft never touches your accounts. You can safely build up an invoice over time and only issue it when everything is correct.
- You can create as many drafts as you need and issue them individually or in a batch — see Approve and issue an invoice.