There are two ways you can get the DA 1380. One way is through an Internet search. The other way is from your unit. Once you have your DA 1380, how do you get started?
Here’s a scenario.
You reported to Fort Eustis one morning, at their aviation medicine, to do your Phase 1 Airborne Physical. Phase 1 takes you all morning to complete. You’re finished in the middle of lunch.
You come back the following week for Phase 2. After Phase 2, you return to your unit and provide them copies of the results of your airborne physical. While doing this at your unit, you also prepare and submit a school request.
While you’re there, you decide to sign for missing field gear that you need for the upcoming field training exercise. You see your supply sergeant. Right after you sign for your needed items, he informs you that additional items came for you from battalion supply.
By the time you get done with all of this, you have 15 minutes left to catch lunch at the DFAC.
How would you record this scenario on a DA 1380?
If you have a fillable DA 1380 form, open it up. If you have a blank copy, make another copy of it, and fill it out with pencil. Use a black pen on the actual copy for the neat finish if you do this by hand.
Block 1 is “date.” Since this is related to pay, or something that could affect pay, you want to use DFAS’s date format. That’s the “YYYYMMDD” format.
Block 2 is “from:” Print or type your unit and your unit’s address.
Block 3 is “Retirement Year Ending Date.”
Your Retirement Year Ending Date (RYE) is based on when you originally started your Army Reserve contract. This is based on your continuous contract. For example, your reserve contract started on November 1. Your RYE will be October 31 the following year.
Let’s say that you were on active duty before that, from April 1, 2010, to October 31, 2014. Your reserve contract began on November 1, 2014, the day after the last day of your active contract. Your current RYE would still be October 31, 2015, not March 31, 2015, because your initial active reserve contract, in a continuous reserve run, determines your RYE.
Review AR 140-185 for Retirement Year End Date details.
Fill this block using the “YYYYMMDD” format.
Block 4 is the “to” block. This will be the address of the staff that updates your record. For soldiers in the Troop Program Unit (TPU), this usually is your full time support staff.
This staff, mainly one of the unit administrators, will process your DA 1380.
Type “commander” all capitalized in this block. Underneath that, type the address of your unit where the support staff is located.
Your support staff will process this for retirement points if you used an “N” code. They’ll process your DA 1380 for retirement points and payment if you used a “P” code. If your support staff is unable to process this at the reserve center, they’ll forward this to the Battalion S1.
If you are an Individual Mobilization Augmentee (IMA), or a member of the Individual Ready Reserves (IRR), you’ll use the HRC address for the office that updates your records.
Block 5 is your name. Type your name in the block in the order the block label shows.
Block 6 is your grade. Type in your pay grade. This is the alpha numeric code for your rank.
Block 7 is your branch. Enter your “Soldier’s Area of Concentration” (AOC) code/Primary Military Occupational Skill (MOS) in this block.
Block 8 is left blank unless block 4 is different from the unit of assignment.
Block 9 gives you an opportunity to mark the kind of training, duties, or instruction that you are involved with.
If you choose “other,” type the description in the box right next to “other.”
Block 9, Column A, is the date that you participated in the training. If the day, month, and year, are in separate columns, use the DD MM YYYY format respectively within the day, month, and year columns.
Block 9, Column B, list hours of training that you did.
Block 9, Column C, is the retirement points that you earned. There are two different coding to mark whether you get retirement points and pay or just get retirement points.
An “N” code marks non paid time. You only get retirement points. A “P” code marks paid time, you get both retirement point credit and pay.
A “1” right next to one of the lettering codes represents one training block of 4 hours; 2 hours if you participated in funeral honors as a member of the funeral detail. A “2” represents two training blocks. You could only get a maximum of “2” per day.
Using the above Airborne Physical scenario, you’d use “N1”. Phase I took the morning and part of lunch time to complete, approximately 4 hours. “N1” will give you one retirement point, but no pay.
In another scenario, where a Soldier does a full day RST, that day would be marked “P2”. A “P2” would give you two retirement points, and pay for two training blocks, or two training days.
Block 9, Column D, lists the nature of the duties that you performed, or training/instruction that you received. For the airborne physical scenario, you could put, “Airborne Physical, Phase I, at Fort Eustis, VA. Retirement points only.”
For the RST scenario, an example of the description could read, “Rescheduled Training (RST) to make up for battle assembly missed on October 25, 2014.” The second RST day would go in the next line, with the same information assuming that a full day of training was made up. The comment in this line could read, “Rescheduled Training (RST) to make up for battle assembly missed on October 26, 2014.
This scenario assumes that the Soldier did two RST days to make up for missing two days of drill.
Block 10 is a typed name, grade and position of the officer/NCO/official that observed you, or was aware of you performing the duties on the DA 1380. The names of the support staff members that observed you are common entries for block 10 and block 11.
Block 11 is the signature of the Soldier or qualified official listed in Block 10.
Some additional Notes:
1. If you’re assigned to a unit, submit this form to your unit. If you’re assigned to the IRR or IMA, submit this form to Human Resources Command (HRC). Submit it to the office that manages your pay, records, and points.
2. If you’re assigned to a unit, and you’re submitting this form straight to your Regional Personal Action Center (RPAC) or to HRC, you’re contributing to them being overwhelmed. This reduces their ability to do their own assigned mission.
3. Use one DA 1380 to cover one month. If your training event overlaps two months, submit two DA 1380s, one covering each month.
3. Don’t complete a DA 1380 for your Army correspondence courses/computer based courses if you complete them on your own.
If your commander authorized you, in writing, to enroll into a course, and to complete it, in order for you to get paid, then complete a DA 1380 for the course you just completed. Submit a certificate of completion, and the completed DA 1380, to those that manage your records. Check with your unit for specific policies covering this.
4. Depending on Army Reserve funding, and your unit, you can get paid to do your structured development courses on your own. Check your unit’s policy on this. If this is applicable to you, and you want to get paid, bring a certificate and a completed DA 1380 with you to your unit.
5. If your unit puts you on AT orders to come in to complete your structured development courses, then you only get paid for your AT orders. Use the certificate as documentation that you completed the course.
Additional References:
1. AR 140-185, Retirement Year and Retirement Points
2. Army Human Resources Command, “Earning Retirement Points.”
3. Office of the Chief, Army Reserve, Memorandum dated February 10, 2014, on using the DA 1380 to award retirement points.