How to Fill Out DD Form 1131: Cash Collection Voucher Submission

DD Form 1131, the Cash Collection Voucher, is the Department of Defense document you use to pay money into a federal account — an overpaid allowance, an unused travel advance, a property-loss charge, a jury duty fee. Fill in your identifying information and the reason for the payment, copy the accounting classification exactly as your finance office gave it to you, attach the paperwork that proves what you owe, and take it with your payment to the Disbursing Office. The current August 2025 edition is on the Executive Services Directorate site at esd.whs.mil.¹

When You’ll Be Handed This Form

A DD 1131 shows up whenever the government needs to pull money back in. The recurring situations:

A payroll audit finds you were paid more than your authorized entitlement, and the excess has to be returned so finance can credit it to the right appropriation.
You came back from an official trip with an unused portion of a travel advance.
A Financial Liability Investigation of Property Loss (FLIPL) held you financially responsible for lost or damaged property.
You served jury duty as a federal civilian employee and were paid a fee by the court. The fees go back to your employing activity, though you may keep separate reimbursements the court paid for mileage, meals, or lodging, and any fees paid for service on a non-workday.²
A court-martial imposed a fine or forfeiture.
Cash from over-the-counter sales at a dining facility or commissary needs to be deposited.

If a refund is going back to the same appropriation the money originally came out of, the accounting classification on the DD 1131 matches the one on the original disbursement voucher.³

What the Disbursing Office Will Accept as Payment

You have more options than most people expect. Disbursing Officers take cash, personal checks (certified or not), corporate checks, bank drafts, postal money orders, bank money orders, and credit union share drafts. Treasury checks are fine as long as they were issued less than a year ago. At locations that participate in the Card Acquiring Service, Visa and MasterCard credit and debit cards work too.³ Make any check or money order payable to the Disbursing Officer’s official position title, not their personal name.

Filling Out the Form

The instructions printed on the back of the PDF assume you already read DoD finance shorthand. Here’s what each box actually asks for.⁴

The Header Boxes

Box 1 (Disbursing Office Collection Voucher Number). Leave blank. The disbursing office assigns this when they process your voucher.

Box 2 (Receiving Office Collection Voucher Number). Optional. Only used if the receiving office runs its own local numbering.

Box 3a and 3b (Received and Forwarded By). Fill this in only if you are handing your payment to someone other than the disbursing office cashier — a unit collection agent, for example. That person enters their activity name and location in 3a and signs 3b. If you’re going straight to the disbursing office cashier, skip these.

Box 3d (Date). Date of the last collection shown, or the date the receiving official prepares the form.

Box 4a (Activity). The name and location of the disbursing activity — the finance office that will process the voucher.

Box 4b (Disbursing Officer). The DO prints their name and title and signs. Not required when the form is validated by a cash control machine.

Box 4d (DSSN). The four-digit Disbursing Station Symbol Number identifying that specific office. Your finance office can tell you what it is.

Box 4e (Date). The primary voucher date, assigned by the functional area. This is the official accountability date.

Box 5 (Period). If the voucher covers collections from more than one date, put the earliest in “From” and the latest in “To.” For a single-day collection, leave it blank.

Transaction Details

Box 6 (Date Received). The date the funds were received. If the form is covering collections from several days, enter “various.”

Box 7 (Name of Remitter / Description of Remittance). Your full name. Military members and civilian employees include their Social Security number. Over-the-counter sales (commissary, dining facility) don’t need individual names.

Box 8 (Detailed Description of Purpose). Say why the money is being collected and tie it to a specific obligation: debt notification number, FLIPL case number, contract number, travel order number. Even if Box 7 seems to explain it, fill this in anyway.

Box 9 (Amount). The exact dollar figure. It has to match the cash or the face value of the check or money order you’re handing over, and it has to match your supporting documents.

Box 10 (Accounting Classification). The full Line of Accounting (LOA) string — the long alphanumeric code that routes the money to the correct budget year, department, appropriation, and account. The regulation also requires a fiscal code that includes the DSSN of the station maintaining the cited appropriation, plus a country code for overseas collections.³

The LOA is where people get stuck. The format varies by service — DFAS uses different LOA maps for Army, Navy, Air Force, and other components, each with its own sequence of department code, fiscal year, appropriation symbol, subhead, fund code, and cost-center identifiers. Don’t try to build the string yourself. Copy it character by character from the debt letter, billing document, or accounting code your finance office gives you.

What to Attach

The DD 1131 records the transaction. The attachments prove it. What you need depends on why you’re paying:

Overpayment recovery: the payroll adjustment notice or billing statement from DFAS showing the amount owed.
Travel advance return: a copy of the travel order and the settlement voucher showing the unused balance.
Property loss: the completed FLIPL or Statement of Charges (DD Form 362) and any demand-for-payment letter.
Jury duty fees: the certificate of attendance from the clerk of court showing dates served and the amount paid. If the certificate doesn’t separate expense reimbursements from fees, the whole amount is treated as fees and has to be turned in.²
Contract disputes or other debts: the original demand letter, billing document, or investigation report.

Every dollar figure on the attachments has to match Box 9. The regulation requires the voucher to include the remitter’s name, the specific authority for the collection, and enough detail for the Disbursing Officer to verify the amount cited.³ Any gap between the paperwork and the form sends the whole package back.

Handing It In

Take the completed DD 1131, your payment, and all supporting documents to the Disbursing Office or your local Finance Office. Some units accept authorized electronic submissions, but collections involving cash or paper checks are usually done in person. If you’re not going straight to the cashier, a receiving official at your unit can take the funds, sign Box 3b, and forward the package.

The Disbursing Officer or an authorized deputy reviews everything, verifies the payment, and signs Box 4b. The functional area then assigns a Collection Voucher Number in Box 1, which becomes the permanent tracking number for the transaction. You get back a signed copy.

Errors That Get the Form Rejected

A voucher with errors gets returned to the functional area for correction rather than processed.³ The problems that come up most often:

A missing, incomplete, or unrecognizable LOA string in Box 10. When the disbursing office can’t post the collection to a specific account, the funds sit in a budget clearing (suspense) account until someone figures out where they go, which delays your credit.
A vague or blank Box 8 with no clear purpose. Collections with an undetermined purpose also end up in suspense.
An amount in Box 9 that doesn’t match the payment or the supporting documents.
Illegible copies. The DO is required to make sure every copy is readable; smudged or cut-off forms come back.
Missing remitter identification. For service members and civilian employees, forgetting the SSN in Box 7 is a common reason for rejection unless the collection is from over-the-counter sales.

Keep Your Signed Copy

Once the DO signs and the voucher number is assigned, you should receive a signed duplicate. Keep it. If an audit later questions whether you repaid an overpayment or returned a travel advance, the signed DD 1131 is the document that settles it. The DoD Financial Management Regulation directs that financial records be retained in accordance with Volume 1, Chapter 9.³ Hold onto yours at least until the underlying debt is fully closed and any audit window has passed.

1
Department of Defense Forms Management Program. DD Form 1131 – Cash Collection Voucher
2
U.S. Army Fort Campbell. Court Leave
3
Department of Defense. DoD 7000.14-R Financial Management Regulation Volume 5, Chapter 8 – Collections
4
Department of Defense. DD Form 1131 Cash Collection Voucher