Can I use an electronic DA FORM 5000/5501?-UPDATED

UPDATED INFORMATION FOLLOWS

Recently we received an Update to this post from an AskTop.net con­trib­u­tor.  He informed us that ALARACT 248/2010 pre­vents the use of Auto cal­cu­la­tions using the Army Publishing Directorate as they con­tain an error in the code. As of this update the dates for the DA FORM 5500 and 5501 are June 2010, so I do not believe an update has been posted.  Also any auto cal­cu­la­tors not approved by HQDA are not autho­rized.  See para­graph 8I and 8J of the attached mes­sage.  Special Thanks to: the AskTop.net Contributor for shar­ing this information

Original Post

I can find no ref­er­ence to an Electronic DA Form 5500 in the MILPER/ALARCT Database. Therefore I would have to say there is noth­ing pre­vent­ing its use. You can search all mes­sages here. Be sure to con­sult your local poli­cies and pro­ce­dures as well.

I would also encour­age the fol­low­ing prac­tice if using an elec­tronic DA Form 5500: If a Soldier comes up over­weight, I would use the cal­cu­la­tions from the elec­tronic form and do a cal­cu­la­tion using a man­ual form. People are human and can make mis­takes. If the data was improp­erly input into the elec­tronic form data­base it is pos­si­ble to get an error. By using the man­ual sys­tem as a backup you ensure your num­bers are correct.

The XFDL (Lotus Forms Viewer) ver­sion of DA Form 5501 does some auto­matic com­pu­ta­tion. It is cur­rent as of Aug 2010 and can be down­loaded from Army Publishing Directorate here.