Three forms, three jobs. The OSHA 300 is the log you keep all year, one or two lines per case. The OSHA 301 is the incident report for a single case, due within 7 calendar days. The OSHA 300A is the year's totals on one page — the only one you post, and the only one you may have to submit.
At a glance
| OSHA 300 | OSHA 301 | OSHA 300A | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses | Injury and Illness Incident Report | Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses |
| Scope | One or two lines per recordable case, all year | One form per recordable case | One page per establishment, per year |
| Deadline | Within 7 calendar days of learning of the case | Within 7 calendar days of learning of the case | Completed and certified before February 1 |
| Posted? | No | No | Yes — February 1 to April 30 |
| Submitted to OSHA? | Only by some establishments with 100+ employees | Same | By most covered establishments over 20 employees in designated industries, by March 2 |
| Kept for | 5 years, and updated during that time | 5 years | 5 years |
All three can be replaced by equivalent forms: a form with the same information, as readable and understandable, completed using the same instructions as the OSHA form it replaces. That is how a workers' compensation first report of injury often stands in for the 301.
The 300 Log: one line per case
The Log is the running record. For each recordable case you enter the case number, the employee's name and job title, the date, where the event occurred and a short description of the injury or illness, the parts of the body affected and the object or substance involved.
Then two classifications that decide everything downstream:
- Seriousness — check one box only: death (G), days away from work (H), job transfer or restriction (I), or other recordable cases (J), recording the most serious outcome, with G the most serious and J the least.
- Type — injury, skin disorder, respiratory condition, poisoning, hearing loss, or all other illnesses.
Then the day counts: days away from work, and days on job transfer or restricted work. A case that had both goes in column H, with its days split between the two day columns. Those two classifications are why the 300A must balance — the case boxes and the type boxes are the same cases counted twice, from two angles.
privacy caseon the Log instead of the employee's name and keep a separate confidential list of case numbers and names: injuries to an intimate body part or the reproductive system, injuries resulting from a sexual assault, mental illnesses, HIV infection, hepatitis or tuberculosis, needlestick and sharps injuries contaminated with another person's blood or other potentially infectious material, and other illnesses where the employee voluntarily asks that their name be kept off.
The 301: what actually happened
The Log says a case exists; the 301 says how. It carries the employee's details, the treating facility and physician, whether the employee was treated in an emergency room or hospitalized overnight, and the narrative: what the employee was doing just before the incident, what happened, what the injury or illness was, and what object or substance directly harmed the employee.
The deadline is the same as the Log — 7 calendar days from receiving information that a recordable case occurred — and it is the form most often replaced by a substitute. Many employers file an insurance or state workers' compensation report instead, which is allowed as long as it is genuinely equivalent. If the substitute lacks fields the 301 has, the missing information has to be added rather than dropped.
The 301 is also the form that feeds any decent investigation. It is worth completing it next to the job hazard analysis for the task: if the narrative describes a step that the analysis never mentioned, the analysis is what needs updating.
The 300A: the page everyone sees
At the end of the year you review the Log so the entries are complete and correct, total every column — entering a zero where there were no cases — and add the calendar year, the company and establishment identity, the annual average number of employees and the total hours worked by all employees.
Then it is certified. Not by the safety manager: by a company executive, defined as an owner of the company, an officer of the corporation, the highest-ranking company official working at the establishment, or that person's immediate supervisor. They certify that they have examined the Log and reasonably believe the summary is correct and complete.
Post it from February 1 to April 30 in a conspicuous place or places where notices to employees are customarily posted — the same board as the other employee notices. Every establishment covered by Part 1904 posts one, even if no work-related injuries or illnesses occurred during the year. A summary of zeros is a normal document; a blank one is not.
Before you copy the totals across, run them through the 300A summary helper: it checks that the injury and illness types add up to the case columns, that the day counts are consistent with the case counts, and that your hours and headcount fit each other — then gives you the year's rates from the same numbers.
Who can ask for a copy
Employees have a right to these records, and the deadlines are short.
| Who asks | What they get | By when |
|---|---|---|
| An employee, former employee or personal representative | The relevant OSHA 300 Log(s), with the names | End of the next business day |
| An authorized employee representative | The relevant OSHA 300 Log(s) | End of the next business day |
| An employee or personal representative | The 301 Incident Report for that employee's own case, complete | End of the next business day |
| An authorized employee representative | The 301 forms, with everything removed except the section titled Tell us about the case | 7 calendar days |
An authorized employee representative here means an authorized collective bargaining agent of employees. You provide the copies free of charge, and you cannot ask why.
Electronic submission, and what OSHA does with it
Posting is not the same as submitting. Under 29 CFR 1904.41, some establishments send their data to OSHA through the Injury Tracking Application by March 2:
- 250 or more employees, in industries that must keep records — 300A data.
- 20 to 249 employees, in the industries listed in OSHA's appendix for that requirement — 300A data.
- 100 or more employees, in the designated high-hazard industries — information from Forms 300 and 301 as well.
What OSHA does with it is the reason accuracy matters: the agency computes rates from the submitted 300A data, and its Site-Specific Targeting program builds an inspection list from the highest DART rates. You can compute the same number yourself with the DART rate calculator before anyone else does.
Bottom line
- 300 = the log, one line per case, never posted, updated for five years.
- 301 = one report per case, within 7 calendar days, an equivalent insurance form allowed.
- 300A = the year's totals, certified by a company executive, posted February 1 to April 30, submitted by March 2 if 1904.41 applies.
- Employees can ask for the Log and get it by the end of the next business day.
- Whether a case belongs on any of them is a separate question, answered in what makes an injury OSHA recordable.