Forecast customer order

Hello - We are on apps 10. We are considering using customer orders for entering forecast parts sales to create demand for purchasing.  The situation is that we will win a bid so we know we will be selling a certain part but we don’t know the customer or the timing yet.  Purchasing needs to start their process on long lead items so they want demand in the system.  Does anyone use a forecast customer order?  How do you identify that it is a forecast because we would not want the order to ever be picked or invoiced?  Once we have a PO, we would enter a new customer order or possibly convert the forecast customer order to a “real” customer order.  Any ideas would be welcome.  Thanks