How to Fill Out DAF Form 1089A: Leave Settlement and Carryover

DAF Form 1089A, the Air Reserve Component Leave Settlement Option, is the one-page form Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard members use to tell finance what to do with accrued leave when a qualifying active-duty tour starts or ends: sell it back for cash, carry it forward to a future order, or split the balance between the two. You complete Section I every time, then fill in Section II if a tour is ending, Section III if one is beginning, or both if you are transitioning between orders. File it before the tour ends. If you miss that window, your leave is automatically sold or forfeited rather than banked.¹

Who Uses This Form

DAF Form 1089A is for Air Reserve Component members only: Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard personnel on Military Personnel Appropriation (MPA), Reserve Personnel Appropriation (RPA), or Active Guard Reserve (AGR) tours.¹ Regular Air Force and Space Force members use the standard AF Form 1089 instead, which handles leave elections tied to reenlistment or voluntary extension of enlistment.²

One boundary worth knowing before you start: if you are transferring into the Air Force Reserve from the Regular Air Force, the Air National Guard, or another service branch, you cannot carry leave with you. All leave accounts must be settled before the transfer. The only exception is an AGR member transferring with no break in service.³

Before You Start: Match the Numbers on Your LES

Pull a current Leave and Earnings Statement first. The days you enter on the form cannot exceed what your LES shows as your accrued balance. Any mismatch and finance will kick the form back, so confirm the number before you write anything down. Reserve Component members earn chargeable leave only while on a qualifying active-duty tour long enough to accrue it; you cannot use accrued leave while on Annual Tour or Inactive Duty Training.¹

Section I: Identification Data

Enter your full legal name (last, first, middle initial), grade, DOD ID number, unit of assignment, expiration of term of service (ETS), and date of separation (DOS). The form asks for your DOD ID, not your Social Security number.¹ Check your grade and unit against your current orders before signing. A mismatch here can delay processing by weeks.

Section II: Leave Settlement at the End of an Order

Complete Section II when your current MPA, RPA, or AGR tour is ending. Fill in the projected end date of the tour and the order number, then pick one of three options and enter the day counts:¹

Option A, sell all: a cash settlement for every accrued leave day. Enter the total number of days.
Option B, carry all forward: bank every accrued day for a future qualifying order. Enter the total days and specify how many of those are Combat Zone Tax Exclusion (CZTE) days.
Option C, split: sell some days and carry the rest forward. Enter both numbers, and note the CZTE days included in the carry-forward portion.

CZTE leave in your carry-forward balance is used first during your next chargeable leave period. And you cannot sell carryover leave while you are off orders, so if you skip Section II and later decide you want cash, you will have to wait for your next qualifying order and file a separate sell-back request through HQ RIO.⁴

Section III: Carrying Leave Into a New Order

Complete Section III when a new qualifying active-duty order is starting and you want to apply leave you previously carried forward. Enter the start date of the new order, the order number, the number of days you are carrying forward, and the CZTE days included.¹

Timing rule: you cannot carry over any accrued leave after the qualifying order has been issued. In practice, complete Section III before or on the date the order starts, not weeks into the tour.

Section III also requires two signatures beyond your own. A Resource Advisor or MPA Manager must confirm that funding is available for the carried-over leave, and the commander (or commander’s representative) at the location where the orders are performed must approve the carry-forward. A Section III submitted with only your signature will come back.

Watch the 60-Day Career Sell-Back Cap

Federal law limits the total leave you can sell back over an entire military career to 60 days.⁵ Every sell-back counts against that running total: reenlistment, extension, separation, retirement, and each DAF Form 1089A election. The form itself flags the limit and asks you to acknowledge it with your signature.¹

The cap applies only to non-excepted leave. Excepted leave, earned during contingency deployments or certain shorter active-duty periods beginning on or after October 1, 2001, does not count against the 60-day limit.³ If you have both types on the books, track them separately. Trying to sell days over the cap will flag the request and hold the whole submission up.

How to Submit the Form

DAFI 36-3003 directs members to complete DAF Form 1089A before the end of each active-duty tour.⁶ The current version (dated January 17, 2025) is available through the HQ RIO website or the DAF e-Publishing portal. If Section III applies, collect the Resource Advisor and commander signatures before submitting.

Sell-back requests are processed by HQ RIO/RPO. The office can process only one sell-back per member per pay period, so multiple orders will be handled sequentially. Current processing runs 90 to 150 days from submission to an updated LES reflecting payment.⁴ Plan accordingly if you are counting on the cash; treat it as money you will eventually see rather than money to budget against next month.

Old orders take a different path. If you are selling back leave from an order that ended more than five years ago, or after October 1, 2019, create a CMS case rather than submitting through the normal channel. For orders that ended before October 1, 2019, a Barring Act waiver must be completed and sent to SAF/FMF for approval before the sell-back can be processed.⁴

How the Payment Is Calculated

Sell-back is paid at the basic pay rate you were receiving on the date the order ended.⁷ Divide your monthly basic pay by 30 for a daily rate, then multiply by the number of days you are selling. Special pay, allowances (BAH, BAS), and incentive pay are excluded. Base pay only.

The payment is taxable. Federal income tax is withheld, and state taxes may apply depending on your state of residence. Once processing is complete, the payment appears on an LES you can use as documentation when filing your return. Questions about a specific balance or payment go to your local Financial Services Office, as DAFI 36-3003 directs.⁶

Common Mistakes That Delay Processing

The single most frequent problem is not filing the form at all. End a qualifying order without a 1089A on file and your accrued leave is automatically sold or lost. Carry-forward is never the default. Short-notice order cancellations catch people this way.

Leave balance mismatch: the days on the form must match your LES. Pull a fresh LES before entering numbers.
Missing signatures on Section III: carry-forward requires both a Resource Advisor and a commander signature. Yours alone is not enough.
Wrong form: the 1089A is only for Air Reserve Component members on qualifying orders. Active-duty Regular members use AF Form 1089.¹
Exceeding the 60-day career cap: if you have already sold 45 days across previous elections, you can only sell 15 more non-excepted days for the rest of your career.
Filing too late for old orders: sell-backs on orders ending years ago require either a CMS case or a Barring Act waiver, which adds months to the timeline.⁴

1
Air Reserve Personnel Center. DAF Form 1089A – Air Reserve Component Leave Settlement Option
2
Air Reserve Personnel Center. AF Form 1089 – Leave Settlement
3
Air Reserve Personnel Center. AFRC Leave Carryover Program Policy Guidance
4
Headquarters RIO. Leave Sellback
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 10 USC 701 – Entitlement and Accumulation
6
Department of the Air Force. DAFI 36-3003 – Military Leave Program
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 37 USC 501 – Payments for Unused Accrued Leave