DD Form 1096 occupies a particular place in Defense recordkeeping. Its title is DD Form 1096, Military Pay and Allowance Claims Voucher, October 1957, and it exists to Military Pay and Allowance Claim Voucher. What the DD prefix records is an administrative judgment made long before your copy was printed: this transaction was determined to be common to the whole Department rather than peculiar to one service, and so the documentation of it was standardized at Department level.
This is why the arrangement matters to you rather than only to the archivists. not stated governs the form throughout the Department, with not stated as the responsible office, so the record you create is legible outside your own component. Joint assignments, agency details and cross-service transactions all depend on that: the paperwork does not have to be reconstructed each time it crosses a boundary.
The edition in force is not stated, carried by the publisher as not stated, and edition discipline is stricter on a Department form than most people expect, precisely because supersession happens everywhere at once. There is no interval during which one service still works from the previous layout while another has moved on.
Work down the page in the printed order, and understand why the order exists. The identifying block establishes whose record this is and under what circumstances it arises. The body of the form then answers questions that are only meaningful once that context is fixed. The signature block comes last because a certification signed before the entries are complete certifies nothing.
Before the first entry, compare the date printed on the form face with not stated. This is not bureaucratic fussiness. Editions change field numbering, and a receiving office working from the current layout may look for information where your copy does not put it. On a Department form the exposure is wider than usual: your record may be reviewed by an office in another service entirely, one with no reason to remember what the previous edition looked like.
Where a specific field is genuinely unclear, the instructions printed on the form come first and not stated governs where the two do not agree.
Download the form
The set published here is PDF, covering 1 pages with roughly 40 fields.
Xfdl appears in the set for reasons of institutional inertia rather than preference. It is the IBM Lotus Forms format, once the Department's electronic forms standard and deployed widely enough that it outlived the decision to move on. IBM Lotus Forms Viewer or an equivalent client opens it; a pdf application will not.
Nothing here is charged for. Published Defense forms are public documents and distribution carries no fee, in any format. One caution about software: fill the form in a desktop pdf application rather than a browser tab. Browser-embedded viewers implement field behaviour inconsistently, and the failure mode is silent loss of everything you entered.
What the form asks for
- Press this reset button to clear the data from all fields
- Line 1. Explanation and description of claim.
- Line 2. Explanation and description of claim.
- Line 3. Explanation and description of claim.
- Line 4. Explanation and description of claim.
- Line 5. Explanation and description of claim.
- Accounting classification (appropriation symbol must be shown; other classification optional).
- Cash.
- Disbursing office voucher number.
- Name of service member.
- Service number.
- Voucher prepared at (paying office).
- Name and address of payee.
- Paid by.
- Line 1. Claim amount (in U. S. dollars and cents).
- Line 2. Claim amount.
- Line 3. Claim amount.
- Line 4. Claim amount.
- Line 5. Claim amount.
- Total claim amount. Value is automatically calculated from lines 1 through 5
- Line 1. Collections, fund or appropriation to be credited.
- Line 2. Collections, fund or appropriation to be credited.
- Line 3. Collections, fund or appropriation to be credited.
- Line 1. Collection amount.
Submission follows not stated and whatever local instruction supplements it. Make a copy before the original leaves. Department forms travel across organizational lines by design, and the administrative distance that makes them useful is the same distance that makes tracing a lost one difficult.
Cross-referenced documents are found by series and number, with nothing further required. That the DD sequence is unified across the Department means a cited number identifies one form and no other, which is the practical payoff of centralizing the numbering in the first place.
Procedures that touch both Department and service processes will cite forms from both sequences, and the coincidence of numbers between them is exactly that — coincidence. An Army proponent maintains the DA series for the Army; not stated or another Department office maintains the DD series for the whole Department. Two independent registries, two independent numbering runs, no correspondence at any value.
Editions change for reasons that originate above the form itself. The prescribing directive is reissued and the form follows; the information the Department needs to collect changes and the fields change with it; the statutory notice language is amended and every form carrying that notice is republished. None of these events announces itself to the person who downloaded a copy last year, which is why confirming not stated at the moment of download is the only reliable check available to you.
The role of this page is narrow and worth stating plainly. It makes a published Defense form available and explains its structure. It does not advise, does not interpret policy for your circumstances, and cannot indicate how any office will treat a completed copy — those judgments rest with the authorities that own the process. Direct such questions to not stated, to the administrative office that services you, or to the authority named in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 1096?
- DD Form 1096, Military Pay and Allowance Claims Voucher, October 1957
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?