Begin by matching the form to your task. DA Form 581 is titled REQUEST FOR ISSUE AND TURN-IN OF AMMUNITION, and you reach for it when you need to request for issue and turn-in of ammunition. Once that matches, check the date. The edition here is 06/01/2021, published with the status ACTIVE. After that, glance at the length: you will be working through 1 page(s) and somewhere near 200 fields. Check this before anything else — a more recent edition is out. Stay on this one only if the record you are handling was already completed on it.
Next, find out whether you are the one who fills it. In most cases you complete the entries yourself, and an administrator in your unit reviews what you wrote before it moves on. If you are the administrator, you will be working from what the individual gives you. Either way, G-4 owns the form and AR 710-2, PAM 700-16 tells you when to raise it and where it goes afterward, so read the directive first if your situation is not routine.
Start at the top of the page and work down. The heading blocks come first: write your name as it appears on your official records, then your identification number, then your unit or organisation, then the date you are preparing the form. Do not skip ahead to the interesting parts and come back — these heading entries are how your form is found in the file afterwards, and a form filed under a misspelled name is a form nobody can locate.
In the body of the form, tab from field to field instead of clicking around. The tab order follows how the form was constructed, which keeps you from missing a box. For check boxes and option buttons, click them. If you find a set where the choices are exclusive, expect your new selection to clear the previous one. Keep an eye on long entries as you type: fields built for one line will not wrap, and what overflows the width will print truncated even though your screen shows all of it. At that point move the text into remarks or onto a continuation. And when something does not apply to you, say so in the field — write the entry that means "none" rather than leaving white space a reviewer has to interpret.
Save the signature for last. Sign by hand, or by whatever electronic method your office accepts, and understand that until you do the document is a draft no matter how complete it looks. If the form calls for a reviewing official, an approving authority, or a witness, take those signatures in the order the blocks print, and have each signer date it on the day they sign rather than the day you prepared it. Before you hand it over, read it once more from the top. You are looking for three things in particular: a mandatory field you left empty, digits transposed in your identification number, and a date written with day and month the wrong way round. Check one more thing if you built this form from a copy you had lying around — old entries survive in a reused file, and they will go forward as though you meant them.
Read the Privacy Act statement when it appears on the page, before you fill in the personal details it covers. It sets out the authority for collecting the information, the purpose behind it, the routine uses it may be put to, and whether your disclosure is required or voluntary. Then keep in mind what you have created — a completed copy carries personal data, and you handle and store it under the rules that apply to such records.
Download the form
Then choose a file to download. What you will see offered is PDF, XFDL, and the only question you need to answer is whether you are typing or writing. Type, and you want the fillable pdf, where the entry areas respond to your keyboard. Write, and you want the printable pdf, which you print empty and complete with a pen. The layout does not change between them, so pick whichever fits how you plan to work today.
Then take care with how you open what you downloaded. Your browser will happily display a pdf, and for reading that is enough — but for typing it is not, because some in-browser viewers accept keystrokes and then throw them away when the tab closes. Put the file somewhere on disk, open it in a proper reader, type into one field and save, and confirm the text is still there when you reopen. If you picked up the xfdl copy, get the IBM Lotus Forms Viewer before you go any further, because nothing else will open the file.
Then simply download. There is no charge, no sign-up and no email to hand over, and the file that arrives is exactly what the publisher released.
What the form asks for
- ACTCODE
- ACTCODE_1
- ACTCODE_2
- ACTCODE_3
- ACTCODE_4
- ACTCODE_5
- ACTCODE_6
- ALLOC_PER
- APPROV_BY
- CC_REQ
- CC_REQ_1
- CC_REQ_2
- CC_REQ_3
- CC_REQ_4
- CC_REQ_5
- CC_REQ_6
- ContentArea1
- DATE_A
- DATE_B
- DATE_C
- DATE_C_1
- DATE_C_2
- DATE_C_3
- DATE_C_4
Once you have signed, route the form. The prescribing directive names the destination: an office, your unit administrative channel, or your personal file, according to the case. Make yourself a copy first, because you will not get the original back. After that, retention is out of your hands — the applicable records schedule fixes how long the document is kept, whatever the practice in a particular office.
Should the package need more than one document, search by series and number. Within the DA series, forms under the same proponent or the same prescribing directive tend to be required as a set, and a form referenced on the page you are filling usually accompanies it. Collect the continuations, covers and transmittals up front so the submission goes complete the first time.
The next time you open this form from your own files, check the edition date first. Revisions come from the proponent without warning to you, so the only reliable step is to hold your copy against the current edition before filling it in again. Records you already completed under a superseded edition stand, and you do not go back to rework them.
Read this before you go. The file you download is a reproduction of a published Department of the Army document, offered as it was published. We are an independent site with no connection to the Department of the Army and no authority to issue anything, and we make no statement about whether your completed form will be accepted anywhere. Treat what you read here as information, not legal advice. Take real questions — about an entry, a requirement, or your eligibility — to G-4 or to your servicing administrative office.
Questions and answers
- What is DA Form 581?
- REQUEST FOR ISSUE AND TURN-IN OF AMMUNITION
- Which edition is current?
- 06/01/2021
- Who is responsible for this form?
- G-4
- In which formats can it be downloaded?
- PDF, XFDL, PDF