If I'm authorized early reporting, must my leave form have the report date as the ending date (or can it have the day I want to report)?

Ending date 23:59:59

I understand that everyone is saying it must be thru your report date however I can't find this in any regulation, Leave and passes, reassignment, nothing. Also why would the leave form on the second page have the statement: Reporting A soldier will report to duty station not later than 2400 on the last day of leave (block 10b) (even if PCS orders contain a later reporting date) if you cant have an earlier date than your report date.

I'm no expert on this stuff but that seems pretty simple to me and the thru your report date seems like one of those this is how its always been things rather than a regulatory thing.

My information is based off of AR 600-8-10, leaves and passes.

PCS leave is calculated from the Report date. If the Report date is 10 Sep, leave will be calculated backwards from that date. This new date will be your beginning leave date (will proceed date).

If you do not want this date you can submit a deferment/ early arrival amendment to your orders to fix this issue. This is in AR 600-8-11, Reassignment. This is pretty easy to do.

(1) below states that they need to make sure your leave will not possibly exceed what you have available. Sure, they could give you leave from 27 July to 3 August, but what if you needed an extension for whatever reason and now you are in the whole on leave. (I realize that wouldn't be the case) However the Commander cant take your 'promise' to report early as fact.

Per AR 600-8-10:
g. Losing commander will release Soldiers in time to permit authorized leave, travel, and TDY, if applicable, so Soldiers reach new station by **reporting date**.
(1) Care must be taken to prevent a period of absence prior to the report date that would exceed leave, travel, or TDY.

The last time I PCSd I had to put the dated from the day I left through my report date on my orders too, but then I reported 30 days early. I remember looking it up at the time and that was legit if I remember correctly.

The DA 31 has to have an end date to match the report date of your orders. If the orders state "early report authorized", and you sign in early, you will only be charged the actual number of days used up to that point. You will be good to go, don't worry. That is how it has always worked. You won't be turned away and you won't be charged the days you didn't use.

As others have stated, your PCS Leave THRU Date must be your report date; not earlier nor later. Period.

This is because your losing installation is still legally responsible for you (or can perform UCMJ actions on you) until you are officially received/inprocessed at your gaining installation. If you report early, you are only charged from the time you signed out of your losing unit until the time you sign into your gaining unit. So if your DA-31 says 30 days but you only take 27 days, you only get charged for those 27 (minus any PTDY you might have)

PTDY is authorized by the losing unit (first O-5 in your chain). When you arrive at your gaining installation, you sign-in with the Housing office, where they will stamp your DA-31 and you will be released for 10 days of PTDY.

If you need to be extended for any reason, you need to call your gaining unit/installation, or failing that, the number pre-printed on every DA-31. No one is authorized to extend you past your report date except Army HRC. Whether you know it or not, you are being tracked from the time you leave until the time you sign in, as in, if you do not report on time, your gaining unit will first call your losing installation to make sure you left, and get any contact info they have. If the gaining unit does not find you within 30 days, you are a "Failure to Gain" and your pay will be stopped.