Stop relying on “I think we did that recently”

Household maintenance often fails because the information is incomplete, not because the work is hard. Someone remembers changing a filter “a while ago.” A technician visited, but the invoice is buried in email. FamilyBoard’s Maintenance tab exists to replace that guesswork with a dated record tied to the actual thing being maintained.

Choose the right starting point: Use the Maintenance Tracker when you need a real record of an asset, owner, due date, source and completed work. If you only need a first-pass list of what to review, use the Home Maintenance Schedule Generator first, then bring the tasks worth keeping into the tracker. The generator creates a starter review; it does not supply manufacturer intervals or background reminders.

What a maintenance task actually stores

The quick-add form asks for a title, a related asset (from your Assets list), a home area (for maintenance that isn’t tied to one specific asset, like “gutters” or “yard”), an owner, a next-due date, a repeat interval in months, a priority (normal, high or low), and an instructions source — a place to note “owner’s manual page 14” or “HVAC company recommendation” so the interval has a traceable origin instead of being invented. Underneath, the record also carries a trigger type of date, interval-after-completion, seasonal or manual; the quick-add form sets this automatically — if you enter a repeat interval greater than zero it becomes interval-after-completion, otherwise it’s date. Seasonal and manual trigger types exist on the record and can be set through the Settings master CSV for tasks that don’t fit either automatic pattern.

What happens when you press Complete

Each maintenance card has a “Complete” button. Pressing it does two things: it adds a maintenance event with today’s date (cost starts at zero and notes start blank, ready for you to edit through the master CSV if you want to log what a technician charged), and if the task has a repeat interval, it recalculates the next-due date by adding that many months to today, clamped so a task completed on the 31st lands on the last valid day of a shorter month rather than erroring. A task with no interval still logs a completion event, then clears its next-due date; it does not gain a separate “completed” task status.

The card shows real history, not just a status

Below the title and due-status badge, each maintenance card shows the linked asset or home area, owner, priority, instructions source, task notes, a running completion count, and up to the five most recent completion events with their dates and any recorded cost. The event cost is displayed as a plain number because maintenance events do not store a currency code; write the currency convention in the task notes or master data if your household could confuse it. A task you’ve completed nine times shows its five newest entries right on the card — no separate report to run.

A worked example

“Clean condenser coils” is linked to the Refrigerator asset, owned by one household member, home area left blank since it’s tied to the asset, next due September 1, interval 6 months, priority normal, instructions source “manufacturer support page.” On September 1 it shows as due; pressing Complete that day logs the event and sets the new next-due date to March 1. After four completions, the card shows “4 completions” and the four dates — a real service history for that one appliance instead of a memory of “we do that sometimes.”

Flexible schedules for work that doesn’t fit a fixed date

Not everything belongs on a clean monthly or seasonal cadence. Some maintenance is condition-based — “inspect and clean if needed” rather than a guaranteed six-month job. The priority field gives that record a visible high, normal or low label on its maintenance card, but it does not change dashboard order or create an alert. A condition-based item without a next-due date will not appear in the dashboard’s seven-day maintenance list, so pair it with a dated task when a real follow-up deadline matters.

The honest limits

FamilyBoard doesn’t send a push notification or email when a task comes due — the due-soon and overdue statuses only appear when you open the app, on the Today dashboard or the Maintenance tab itself. There’s no built-in library of manufacturer-recommended intervals; the instructions source field is where you record where your interval came from, but the app doesn’t look it up for you. And for anything involving gas lines, electrical panels or structural work, FamilyBoard is a record of who came and what was done — not a substitute for hiring a licensed professional.