Chase what is late
Reminders, late fees, and reading the aging buckets.
Walkthrough · 2 min read
The receivables ledger lists every issued invoice with its age and payment state, so chasing never means opening every project. From a row you can send a reminder, apply your stated late fee, mark it paid, or write it off.
Nothing is chased unless the invoice has a due date, and that date comes from your payment terms — presets from due-on-receipt through net 45, with a per-invoice override. An invoice saved without one can never become overdue, so no reminder will ever go out for it. That is the most common reason a late invoice goes quiet.
Reminders escalate rather than repeat. Stria sends up to three for an invoice, at least five days apart, and each one is written to do a different job.
- The first assumes the invoice was simply missed, and asks for nothing more than a look.
- The second asks for a payment date, because a date is the thing that actually moves an invoice.
- The third states the terms you agreed, including the late fee, before any fee is applied.
Late fees are yours to state and yours to apply: a percentage, a flat amount, and a grace period you set. Automatic application is off by default, and where you do switch it on the fee is withheld until a final notice has gone out, so it never arrives unannounced. It is charged on what is still outstanding rather than on the original total, so a part payment reduces it.
Note: A stated late fee does its work without ever being charged: it prints on the invoice and fills the late-fee clause in your agreement. Actually applying it to a client is a separate, deliberate action.
Outstanding money is grouped by how late it is — current, 1–30 days, 31–60, 61–90, and over 90 — and is never summed across currencies. The split matters because collection odds fall sharply past 60 days: money in the last two buckets needs a phone call, not another email.
Open the receivables ledger — in your Stria workspace.