You need DA Form 833, and this page gets you to the file and through it. Start with what the form is: LICENSE TO USE ARMY RESERVE FACILITIES, used to license to use usar facilities. Check next that you have the right version — the edition dated 11/01/2019 is the one published here, and its status is ACTIVE. Then look at the size before you begin, because 1 page(s) and roughly 125 fields tell you how long this will take. Before you go further, note that a newer edition exists. Use this one only if you are looking at a record 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, CAR owns the form and AR 140-483 tells you when to raise it and where it goes afterward, so read the directive first if your situation is not routine.
Begin with the first block and follow the printed order. You will enter your name first, exactly as your official records show it, followed by your identification number, your organisation, and the date of preparation. Resist the urge to jump to the substantive blocks and return to the header later. Those first entries are the index for the whole record, and an error there costs you the ability to retrieve it.
Now for the body. Use tab to advance through the fields; the order was set when the form was built and following it keeps you from leaving gaps. Check boxes and option buttons take a click. Where the options are mutually exclusive, choosing one will clear another, which is how the group is meant to behave. As you type longer entries, watch the field edge. One-line fields do not wrap, and anything past the edge prints missing even when you can still read it on screen — when that happens, put the text in remarks or on a continuation sheet. Leave nothing blank because it does not apply; enter the mark that means it does not apply, so the reviewer knows you read the question.
Leave the signature until everything else is done. Sign by hand or by an approved electronic means, and remember that a form without a signature is a draft, however complete the entries. Where a second and third signature are required — reviewing official, approving authority, witness — go in the order the blocks appear, and each signer dates the form on the day of signing. Then go back to the top and read what you wrote. Look first for a mandatory field you passed over, then for transposed digits in your identification number, then for a date with the day and month inverted. If you started from a file you had used before, look also for entries left from that earlier use; nothing removes them but you.
You will find a Privacy Act statement on the form wherever personal information is collected. Read it at that point rather than skipping past it, because it tells you the authority for the collection, the purpose, the routine uses, and whether answering is mandatory. After you fill the form, remember that your copy contains personal data. Store it and transmit it as your office requires for records of that kind.
Download the form
Now pick your file. You have PDF, XFDL to choose from, and the choice depends on one thing: whether you will type the entries or write them by hand. Choose the fillable pdf when you want to type, tab between fields and keep a clean copy on your computer. Choose the printable pdf when you intend to print the blank first and write on paper. The pages look identical either way, so you are not giving anything up by picking the wrong one — you are only choosing how you work.
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
- DAYOF_A
- DAYOF_B
- LABEL1
- LABEL2
- LABEL69
- LABEL70
- LABEL71
- LABEL72
- LABEL73
- LABEL74
- LABEL75
- LABEL76
- LABEL77
- LABEL78
- LABEL79
- LABEL80
- LABEL81
- LABEL82
- LABEL83
- LABEL84
- LABEL85
- LABEL86
- LABEL87
- LABEL88
Now send it on. Follow the routing in the prescribing directive, which will point you to a named office, to your unit administrative channel, or to your own file. Take a copy before you release it. From there the record follows the retention schedule for the series, and neither you nor the receiving clerk shortens or extends that on local judgement.
If you find you need a second form to go with this one, look by series and number. Forms in the DA series that share a proponent or a prescribing directive are often used together, and any form named on the face of this one normally goes forward with it. Gather continuation sheets, cover sheets and transmittal documents before you submit, not after somebody asks for them.
Check the edition date again the next time you reach for this form. Editions change when the proponent revises the content, and a copy you saved months ago may no longer be current — compare the date printed on your file against the edition in force before you type anything into it. What you do not need to do is redo work already finished: a form you completed and submitted under an earlier edition stays as it is.
One last thing to be clear about before you download. What you get here is a copy of a published Department of the Army document. This site is not part of the Department of the Army, issues no forms of its own, and cannot tell you that any office will accept what you submit. Nothing written on this page is legal advice. When you are unsure about a particular entry, a requirement or whether you are eligible at all, ask CAR or the administrative office that services your unit — they answer those questions and we do not.
Questions and answers
- What is DA Form 833?
- LICENSE TO USE ARMY RESERVE FACILITIES
- Which edition is current?
- 11/01/2019
- Who is responsible for this form?
- CAR
- In which formats can it be downloaded?
- PDF, XFDL, PDF