What a home maintenance score actually measures, and how to raise yours

A home maintenance score measures how late your due work is, not how much work is on the plan. Maintainly starts at 100 and subtracts points only for tasks that are overdue or due within the next seven days. A task due further out costs nothing, so a long plan does not lower the number.

The alternative is to count. Ten tasks done out of twenty reads as 50 percent, which penalises a thorough plan and flatters one that tracks almost nothing. Scoring lateness avoids that. You can add every task that fits your home from the 66-task library and the score stays where it was, because nothing new is late on the day you add it.

Some tasks are left out of the calculation entirely. Paused and archived tasks do not count, and neither does a one-off task you have completed. A task you have snoozed is ignored until its snooze date arrives. A task with no due date is ignored too.

The score belongs to one home. It is calculated on your iPhone from that home’s tasks and completion log, so it works offline and does not need an account.

The score is 100, minus an overdue penalty, minus a due-soon penalty, minus a safety penalty, plus a completion bonus. Each part has a cap. The result is rounded to a whole number and held between 40 and 100. Every task has a weight, which sets how many points it can cost.

Task weights

A safety-critical task has a weight of 4. Every other task takes its weight from its priority: 2.5 for critical, 1.8 for high, 1 for medium and 0.5 for low. The safety flag overrides the priority, so a safety task always weighs 4.

In Maintainly’s task library, 19 of the 66 tasks are flagged safety-critical, including smoke and carbon monoxide alarm batteries, the dryer vent, the annual boiler service and the chimney sweep. Another 15 are critical priority, such as gutter cleaning and the furnace service. Most of the rest, including filter changes, are medium.

Lateness

An overdue task’s penalty is multiplied by a lateness factor: 1 plus the days overdue divided by 30, with a ceiling of 2. One day late gives 1.03. Fifteen days gives 1.5. From 30 days onward it stays at 2.

So an overdue medium task such as a furnace filter change costs about 3 points on its first day and 6 points from day 30. It never costs more than 6 on its own.

The completion bonus

Every completion logged in the last 90 days counts toward the bonus. Skipped tasks do not. The bonus uses a logarithm, so the first few completions matter most: 1 completion adds 3 points, 3 add 6, 5 add 7, 10 add 10, and 17 or more reach the cap of 12.

The bonus rewards recent activity, not punctuality. A task done late counts the same as one done on time. Because the score cannot go above 100, the bonus only ever offsets penalties.

Take a plan with a furnace filter 20 days overdue, a smoke alarm battery 6 days overdue, gutter cleaning due in 4 days and two completions in the last 90 days. The penalties total 31.4, the bonus is 4, and the score is 73. Replacing the battery lifts it to 99.

The smoke alarm battery is safety-critical, so its weight is 4 and its lateness factor at 6 days is 1.2. The filter is medium priority with a factor of 1.67 at 20 days. Gutter cleaning is critical priority (weight 2.5) and falls inside the seven-day window. Every other task on the plan is due more than a week away and adds nothing.

Adding it up: 100 minus 19.4 minus 2.0 minus 10, plus 4, is 72.6, which rounds to 73. Once the battery is replaced and logged, its 14.4 and the flat 10 both disappear and the third completion raises the bonus to 6. The new total is 100 minus 5.0 minus 2.0 plus 6, which is 99. One task moved the score 26 points.

In Maintainly, 80 to 100 is labelled "Great shape", 60 to 79 is "Good, a few to do" and 40 to 59 is "Needs attention". With no completion bonus, one overdue routine task still leaves you in the 90s. One overdue safety task puts you at 78 on its first day late.

The table shows what a single slip costs when nothing else is wrong and no completions have been logged recently. The gap between the routine row and the safety row is deliberate. The US Fire Administration’s smoke alarm guidance says to test alarms monthly and replace 9-volt batteries at least once a year, and a late filter change does not carry that kind of risk. The reasons those tasks are flagged are set out in the maintenance tasks that are really about safety.

With no completion bonus, two safety tasks left overdue for 30 days are enough to reach 40, the lowest score the app shows. The more useful comparison is with your own number a week or a month ago. The score screen shows the change since the previous weekly reading, and Maintainly Pro adds a trend chart of the last 12 weekly readings.

The score is recalculated from today’s date, so it moves as time passes. A task entering its final seven days takes off a little. A task crossing its due date takes off more, and that penalty keeps growing for 30 days. Completions older than 90 days also stop counting toward the bonus.

• A task came within seven days of its due date. A medium task takes off 0.8 points and a safety task 3.2. This is the early warning.
• A task went overdue. The small due-soon penalty is replaced by the larger overdue penalty the day after the due date.
• An overdue task got older. Its lateness factor climbs from 1 to 2 over 30 days, so the same task costs up to twice as much as it did on day one.
• A snooze ran out. A snoozed task is ignored only until its snooze date. After that it counts as overdue again, measured from its original due date.
• Old completions aged out. If you logged a batch of work three months ago and little since, the bonus shrinks as those entries pass 90 days.

Clear overdue safety tasks first, because each one removes up to 24 points of weighted penalty plus the flat 10. Then clear the oldest overdue routine tasks, log work you have already done, and move the date on anything you cannot do yet. Pause or delete tasks that no longer apply.

When you save a completion, the app shows the score before and after, so you can see what that task was costing. If you are setting up a plan from scratch, a schedule that survives real life covers how to choose due dates you can keep.

1. Do the overdue safety tasks first. Each carries a weight of 4 and the flat 10 points. No other single task returns as much.
2. Then work from the most overdue task down. Maintainly puts one task at the top of the home screen: the most overdue one, with safety tasks winning ties. The score screen lists the top three.
3. Log what you have already done. A filter you changed but never marked done still counts as overdue. Reminder notifications carry a "Mark done" button, and each logged completion also feeds the bonus.
4. Move dates you cannot meet. If the chimney sweep cannot come until November, snooze the task or change its due date. A task with a future date carries no overdue penalty. Do this only when the new date is real.
5. Pause or delete tasks that no longer apply. Paused and deleted tasks are left out of the calculation, so a sold car or a drained pool stops counting.

The score describes your plan, not the physical condition of the house. It knows only the tasks you have added, their due dates and what you have logged. It cannot detect a failing roof or a faulty appliance, and it is not an inspection, a compliance record or a valuation.

Three properties of the calculation are worth knowing. First, the completion bonus can hide a small penalty. In the worked example the filter is still overdue at a score of 99, so check the overdue list as well as the number. Second, the score stops at 40, and the caps mean a badly neglected plan and a very badly neglected plan can show the same figure. Third, a home with no overdue tasks scores 100 even if the plan is missing things the house needs.

For gas, electrical and structural questions, the score is no substitute for a qualified professional. Treat it as a measure of whether you are keeping the promises you made to yourself.

Working it out on paper

The same rules work without the app. List each task with a due date and a weight: 4 for safety tasks, 2.5 for the jobs that cause expensive damage when missed, and 1 for routine ones. For each overdue task take 3 times the weight, rising to 6 times once it is a month late, and add 10 for each overdue safety task. Subtract the total from 100. This leaves out the due-soon penalty and the completion bonus, so it will read a few points away from the app.