Hi and welcome to GMAT Club.
Back in the day, GMAC would mail score reports to schools on a regular basis.
Now, they just make it available to the University and it is totally OK to "send" the report to the University without having an application. Technically all you are doing is making it available for the AdCom to look it up and often, that means they can even look it up next year.
Also, with GMAT online, there is no cost to send scores so you don't need to choose schools until after you take the test to send the scores. Only during the test-center based test do you need to worry about sending scores.
P.S. Your dashboard in the application usually will show if your score has been "received" so when you start your application you can see if your score has been "matched" with your profile. Not sure if that is a manual or automatic process - it takes some time.
Good Luck!
BB