How to Fill Out and Submit DA Form 1506: Certification and Pay Impact

DA Form 1506, the Statement of Service for Computation of Length of Service for Pay Purposes, is the Army document you use to list every period of military service you’ve completed so your pay date and retirement dates can be set correctly.¹ You complete the top half; the Adjutant General’s office verifies your entries against official records and certifies the total. That certified total drives the dates your pay and longevity increases are built on.

When You Actually Need One

The form exists to pull a fragmented service history into a single verified timeline. You’ll be asked to complete one in situations like these:

You served in the Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, or Coast Guard before joining the Army. Block 4 asks you to identify the branch for each period.¹
You separated, spent time as a civilian, and came back in. Each prior enlistment gets its own row so the gap is accounted for.
You’re moving from the National Guard or Reserve to Active Duty and need qualifying prior duty credited.
You’re commissioning with prior enlisted or warrant officer time and want the O-1E, O-2E, or O-3E pay rate that goes with more than four years of creditable prior service.²

One boundary worth stating: state active duty performed solely under orders from a governor doesn’t count toward federal pay computation, and Inactive National Guard time doesn’t either. The form’s certification says so directly.¹³ If your entire career is continuous Active Duty Army from one enlistment, you probably won’t see this form at all.

Documents to Pull Before You Start

You can’t fill this out from memory. Every row asks for a branch, a status, exact start and end dates, and any lost time. Before you open the PDF, get:

A DD Form 214 for each prior period of active service. Each one shows your entry date, separation date, and total active service for that period.⁴
An NGB Form 22 for any Army or Air National Guard service. It’s the Guard equivalent of the DD-214.⁵
Your DD Form 4 enlistment contract, which establishes the start of your first period of service.
Annual retirement point statements and any orders calling you to active duty, for Reserve or Guard periods that don’t produce a DD-214.

The current fillable PDF is on the Army Publishing Directorate site and mirrored by U.S. Army Recruiting Command.¹ If your history runs longer than the rows on the main form, use DA Form 1506-1, the continuation sheet.⁶ Check that you have the latest edition before you type anything in.

Filling Out the Form

The form has two halves. Blocks 1 through 10 are yours. Blocks 12 through 19b are reserved for the Adjutant General’s office and should stay blank on your copy.¹

Blocks 1 Through 3: Who You Are

Block 1 is your name. Block 2 is your Social Security number. Block 3 is a complete mailing address. On active duty, use your unit personnel officer’s address; on active duty for training, use your unit commander’s.¹

Blocks 4 Through 9: One Row Per Service Period

Every separate enlistment, commission, or warrant officer appointment gets its own row, regardless of branch. Fill in each block as follows:

Block 4, Service: the branch — Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, or Coast Guard.
Block 5, Check: your status during that period. ENL for enlisted, WO for warrant officer, COM for commissioned officer.
Block 6, From: the start date in year, month, day.
Block 7, To: the end date in the same format.
Block 8, Time Lost: days of lost time during that period (AWOL, confinement, and similar). Enter zero if there was none.
Block 9, Computation: the net creditable service for that row, meaning the span from Block 6 to Block 7 minus any lost time in Block 8, expressed in years, months, and days.

A quirk of Army date math: for computation, a period ending on the 31st of a month is treated as ending on the 30th, and February 28 in a non-leap year becomes February 30. AR 637-1 spells out these conventions so every calculation across the Army lines up. Lost time in Block 8, however, uses the actual calendar count. A full month of January AWOL is 31 days, not 30.⁶

Block 10: The Total

Block 10 sums the Block 9 entries into a single total of creditable service. Recheck the math before you sign. This number is what the Adjutant General’s office compares against your records, and it’s what your pay dates are built from.

Submitting and Getting It Certified

Attach your DD-214s, NGB-22s, enlistment contracts, and any supporting orders to the completed form and hand the packet to your unit personnel officer. Your S-1 shop takes it in and forwards it for verification.

On the verification side, Blocks 12 through 18 mirror your Blocks 4 through 10 so the Adjutant General’s office can enter corrected data if your entries don’t match the official record. Block 19a is the authenticating signature and Block 19b is the date.¹ Once authenticated, the verified totals become part of your official pay record.

How the Verified Total Affects Your Pay

The certified figure in Block 10, or the corrected figure in Block 18 if it was adjusted, sets two dates that stay with you for the rest of your career:

Pay Entry Basic Date (PEBD). This determines which years-of-service column you sit in on the pay table. AR 637-1 computes PEBD from your most recent entry on duty, working backward to absorb all prior creditable service.⁶
Basic Active Service Date (BASD). This reflects total active duty time and is likewise established from the form’s creditable service data.⁶

A PEBD off by a few months can push your next longevity raise back, and that difference compounds over a career. Under the Blended Retirement System, PEBD also governs when you become eligible for continuation pay, the mid-career bonus available after eight years of service but before twelve. If the date is wrong, the system may not flag you at the right time.⁷

For prior-enlisted officers, the same form is how you qualify for the O-1E, O-2E, or O-3E pay rate. Creditable service for that purpose is measured in retirement points, and you need more than 1,460 under 10 U.S.C. § 12732(a)(2).² For Reserve and Guard soldiers pursuing a non-regular retirement, the form tracks the periods that count. Guard duty is creditable only when performed under a presidential call-up or under Title 10 orders; duty performed exclusively under state authority does not count, even for a federally recognized unit.³

If You Can’t Find Your Records

Missing DD-214s and lost enlistment contracts are common, especially for older service. Two agencies can help you rebuild the file.

National Personnel Records Center

The National Archives holds military personnel records at the NPRC in St. Louis. Request copies through eVetRecs at vetrecs.archives.gov, or mail a signed Standard Form 180 to National Personnel Records Center, 1 Archives Drive, St. Louis, MO 63138. Fax is 314-801-9195.⁸ Written requests have to be signed in cursive and dated within the past year. Wait at least 90 days before following up; duplicate requests slow the process.

Army Human Resources Command

If NPRC returns a negative response, the Veterans Inquiry Branch at HRC may still be able to issue a DA Form 1569, Transcript of Military Service, provided they can verify key service data.⁹ Send a signed SF 180 with a valid photo ID to:

U.S. Army Human Resources Command
1600 Spearhead Division Avenue, Dept. 420
Fort Knox, KY 40122-5402

Email requests go to usarmy.knox.hrc.mbx.tagd-ask-hrc@army.mil.⁹ Include copies of any documents you have on hand that might not be in the official file: old orders, LES copies, enlistment papers. They help the VIB piece together what’s missing.

Fixing an Error After Certification

If your form has already been authenticated and something is wrong (a prior enlistment left off, lost time overcounted), start with your S-1 shop and see whether an administrative correction resolves it. If that fails, or you’ve already separated, the Army Board for Correction of Military Records is the next step.

The ABCMR has authority under 10 U.S.C. § 1552 to correct any military record when necessary to fix an error or remove an injustice.¹⁰ You apply on DD Form 149, submitted online at actsonline.army.mil or by mail to the Army Review Boards Agency at 251 18th Street South, Suite 385, Arlington, VA 22202-3531.¹¹ Include a signed signature page and copies of every supporting record you have; don’t count on the official file holding everything.

The statutory deadline is three years from the date you discover the error, though the board can waive a late filing if it finds doing so is in the interest of justice.¹⁰ A corrected service record can trigger back pay if your PEBD or BASD was set too late and you were underpaid as a result. The board expects you to have tried your chain of command and other agencies first, so exhaust those before you apply.¹¹

1
U.S. Army Recruiting Command. DA Form 1506 – Statement of Service
2
Defense Finance and Accounting Service. Basic Pay – Officers With Prior Enlisted or Warrant Officer Service
3
U.S. Army. Retired Pay for Soldiers
4
National Archives. DD Form 214 Discharge Papers and Separation Documents
5
National Guard Bureau. NGB Form 22 Sample
6
Department of the Army. AR 637-1 Army Compensation and Entitlements Policy
7
Defense Finance and Accounting Service. Blended Retirement System Continuation Pay Fact Sheet
8
National Archives. Request Military Personnel Records Using Standard Form 180
9
U.S. Army Human Resources Command. Veterans Inquiry Branch – Frequently Asked Questions
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 10 USC 1552 – Correction of Military Records
11
U.S. Army. Army Review Boards Agency