Sanity4J allocates a severity to all issues found, according to the perceived risk to the project / application. The severity levels from most to least important are "High", "Significant", "Moderate", "Low", and "Info".
Projects or organisations should determine an appropriate impact for each type of category to help them prioritise issues and determine an appropriate remediation plan. The following table presents an example issue rating table to help you get started.
| Issue Rating | Description | Suggested Fix |
| High | * Major impact on other operational systems, for example will adversely effect the operation of another system or * Major maintenance overhead, or * The system may have serious performance or reliability issues. | Prevent issue from occurring at all costs OR senior attention needed OR consider implementing additional controls. |
| Significant | * The project could be subject to significant review or changed ways of operation. * Moderate impact on operational systems, for example requires an upgrade to other systems or * Additional maintenance overhead, such as having to support duplicate products, or insufficient documentation to be able to maintain the application. | Prevent issue from occurring OR senior attention needed OR consider implementing additional controls. |
| Moderate | * Threaten the efficiency or effectiveness of some aspect of the project, but would be internally dealt with. * This includes issues that could cause minor maintenance difficulties but do not result in production issues, or affect other production systems. | Ensure project developers are made aware of violations and remediation measures. |
| Low | * Result in consequences that could be dealt with by routine operations. This includes issues that would not result in production or maintenance problems, e.g. document formatting. | Continue activity as normal, but address in future. |
| Info | * For information only; documents issues which junior developers may not be aware of. | N/A |