Degrees of Criticality / Lateness or whatever

Question

I am writing a Web Application where I am going to list certain events and their overdue days. If an event is overdue by less than 10 days then its safe. If it is overdue by over 10 days but less than 30 days then I would add a flag called warning beside it.

The problem is I am not sure if the words safe and warning are proper.

Ok. The application is a timesheet application and I am listing the weeks where the User has not submitted the timsheets (timesheets are pending) and hence over due.

Can anyone give me 4 or 5 words to describe various degrees of overdue?

I am not sure how to word this question or do a Google search. What do you call these kind of set of words?

EDIT: I think Ive got answer for my question. But what do you call these series of words?

Answer 1

I have recently addressed this problem in my own UX testing.

My research finds that people need a clear indicator of the time-scales related to each label.

That legend:

• can be always-visible in a legend on the side.
• can be introduced once, at the beginning of account use, in an 'orientation' process.

Answer 2

how about:

late, very late, extremely late, unacceptably late

important, urgent, severely urgent, critically urgent

since you are building a web application you could also use a colour coding system on text or icons such as green -> yellow -> orange -> red