DD Form 2257 occupies a particular place in Defense recordkeeping. Its title is DD Form 2257, Designation or Termination of Military Postal Clerk (M P C), Financial Postal Clerk (F P C), Custodian of Postal Effects (C O P E), Postal Finance Officer (P F O), May 2000., and it exists to Designation/Termination MPC-FPC-COPE-PFO. 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.
The practical effect of Department-level issue is interoperability. not stated establishes the requirement across the Defense enterprise; not stated keeps the document current for all of it. No service maintains its own variant, which means a completed record travels between components — service to agency, agency to joint command — and arrives in a format the receiving office already knows how to read.
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a form, the replacement takes effect across every component simultaneously, so an older copy is not merely locally out of date — it is out of date in every office that might receive it.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 form is laid out top to bottom in a sequence that reflects how the record will be read, not merely how it was drawn. Identification comes first because everything below it is understood in relation to a named person, unit or transaction; substantive entries follow; certification closes the document because certification attests to what precedes it. Filling out of order tends to produce internal inconsistencies — an entry that made sense before the header was settled and does not afterward.
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.
For an ambiguous field, read the form's own instruction, then not stated, which controls.
Download the form
Formats available: PDF, across 1 pages and about 21 fields. That several formats coexist is a consequence of scale — the Department cannot standardize the software on every desk that needs this form, so it standardizes the document instead.
Two states of the same page circulate, and the reason is worth knowing. In the fillable pdf, the boxes are real fields holding real data; in the printable pdf, the boxes are drawings. Where a record will cross components — as Department records regularly do — the typed version is the safer artifact. Each scan, each forwarding, each reproduction costs handwriting a little legibility, and the office that finally files the record is rarely the office that received it first.
What the form asks for
- 1. To. (Use complete address.)
- 2. From. (Use complete address.)
- 3. The individual named below is designated: Press space bar to mark X in first box if military postal clerk (military), second box if financial postal clerk (civilian), third box if custodian of postal effects, or fourth box if postal finance officer.
- 4. Name (last, first, middle initial) (typed or printed).
- 5. Pay Grade.
- 6. Branch of Service.
- 7. Activity for which designated.
- 8. Acknowledgement. Signature of designee.
- 8. Date (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 9.a. Typed or printed name of designating official (last, first, middle initial).
- 9.b. Pay grade.
- 9.c. Signature.
- 9.d. Duty title.
- Termination. 10. The above designation is terminated effective: (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day.)
- 11. Reason for termination. Explain in detail.
- 12.a. Typed or Printed Name of Terminating Official (last, first, middle initial).
- 12.b. Pay grade.
- 12.c. Signature.
- 12.d. Duty Title.
- Press this Reset button to clear the data from all fields.
The completed form goes to the office named in not stated or in local implementing procedure, and it is worth keeping a copy before it goes. On a Department form the destination is frequently outside your own chain — another service, a defense agency, a joint staff — and recovering a document that has crossed an organizational boundary is a slower business than retrieving one from a file down the hall.
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.
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.
A word on what this page is. It distributes a published Department of Defense document and describes what the document contains and how it is completed. It is not the issuing authority, does not speak for one, and offers no legal advice; nothing written here determines whether a particular submission will be accepted, because that determination belongs entirely to the office receiving it. Questions of applicability, eligibility or procedure go to not stated, to your servicing personnel office, or to the office identified in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2257?
- DD Form 2257, Designation or Termination of Military Postal Clerk (M P C), Financial Postal Clerk (F P C), Custodian of Postal Effects (C O P E), Postal Finance Officer (P F O), May 2000.
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?