Consider what a Department-level form is for. DD Form 1351-3 — DD Form 1351-3, Statement of Actual Expenses, September 1997 — was established to Statement of Actual Expenses, and it was placed in the DD sequence because the underlying transaction occurs throughout the Defense establishment in substantially the same shape. Standardizing the record was cheaper and more reliable than letting six services each design their own.
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.
Current edition: not stated, status not stated. Understand why that date is worth attention here. When the Department reissues a form, the replacement takes effect across every component simultaneously, so an older copy is not merely locally out of date — it is out of date in every office that might receive it.
The sequence printed on the form is the sequence in which a reviewer will read it, and the two should agree. Header data frames every entry below it; the substantive fields depend on that frame; the certification stands at the end because its whole function is to vouch for what came before. Entries made out of sequence commonly contradict entries made earlier.
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.
Fill all of it, marking inapplicable items N/A. A record with gaps cannot later demonstrate whether the gap was a decision or an oversight, which is exactly the ambiguity documentation exists to remove. Dates go in the form's own format — on a document that crosses service lines, an ambiguous date is a real hazard rather than a pedantic one.
Understand what the Privacy Act Statement is doing on the page. It exists because collecting personal data from an individual triggers a duty to explain the collection: under what authority, for what purpose, to whom the information may routinely go, and whether you are obliged to answer. That explanation precedes the fields for the obvious reason — afterwards it is merely a notice, beforehand it is a basis for deciding.
Signature is the point at which a completed form becomes a certification, and the requirement follows from that. On paper it means ink in the designated block; electronically it means a credentialed digital signature, ordinarily applied with a Common Access Card in software that supports it. A name typed into the signature field is data, not an act — it demonstrates nothing about who entered it. The date beside the signature fixes when the certification was made, which is why a signed but undated block is treated as incomplete.
The defects that return forms are the same ones year after year: a superseded edition, required fields left blank, handwriting that fails on reproduction, dates in a convention the form did not ask for, and certification without a signature or without a date. 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 164 fields. More than one format survives because the Department serves users under very different conditions, from a desk with current software to a location where a printer is the only reliable output.
Fillable and printable are not two presentations of one file but two different objects. One holds your entries as structured data within the document; the other is a static picture meant to meet a pen. Since a DD form frequently moves outside the organization that created it, the durability of the entry matters more here than on a record that stays in one drawer. Typed text reproduces indefinitely; handwriting degrades at every copy.
If you find an xfdl file here, its presence is historical. The format belongs to IBM Lotus Forms, which the Department adopted Department-wide for electronic forms and fielded on a scale that makes wholesale removal slow. You need the matching viewer to open it; ordinary pdf software cannot read the format and will say so unhelpfully.
All of it downloads without charge. Where care is needed is in the reader you choose. A fillable pdf depends on field properties that desktop applications honour and browser previews frequently ignore, so work locally rather than inside a browser window.
What the form asks for
- Date. Enter 4 digit year.
- Date. 2 digit month, 2 digit day (line 1).
- Lodging (see note 1).
- Meals (See note 2). Breakfast.
- Lunch.
- Dinner.
- Laundry (pressing, cleaning).
- Local transportation (see note 3).
- Other (see note 4).
- Date (month and day), line 3.
- Lodging.
- Breakfast.
- Lunch.
- Dinner.
- Laundry.
- Local transportation.
- Other.
- Date (month and day), line 4.
- Lodging.
- Breakfast.
- Lunch.
- Dinner.
- Laundry.
- Local transportation.
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.
Forms referenced inside this one are located by number alone, and that simplicity is a direct product of Department-level numbering. Because the DD sequence is maintained centrally and not duplicated by service, a number is a complete address: one number, one document, throughout the Defense establishment.
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.
A form is downstream of the policy that requires it, and revision usually starts there: a directive is reissued, a collection requirement is altered, notice language is updated by statute. The form is republished as a consequence. Since none of that reaches individual users, an archived copy quietly becomes wrong, and verifying not stated each time you download is the whole remedy.
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 1351-3?
- DD Form 1351-3, Statement of Actual Expenses, September 1997
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?