My EPS selection letter is signed, when will my promotion orders be cut?

Orders will gen­er­ally be cut by the National Guard 15 to 30 days from the sign­ing of an EPS (Enlisted Promotion System) let­ter. However, there are sev­eral vari­ables that could impact that time. Here are a few:

EPS List

Where are you on the EPS list? Are you num­ber one or num­ber eight? If you’re num­ber one, that’s good. If you num­ber eight, that could slow the pro­cess­ing of your pro­mo­tion orders. If you not num­ber one, every Soldier who is above you on the list must be con­tacted and given the right to accept or decline the pro­mo­tion. If a Soldier is in Afghanistan, the head quar­ters com­mand in your state must for­warded the let­ter thru the Chain of Command (which can cause delays) to the Soldier. Once a Soldier is con­tacted, each Soldier is required to sign a let­ter of accep­tance or dec­li­na­tion (which could take addi­tional time if the Soldier is over­seas) and the let­ter must be returned to head quar­ters (which takes time).

Records val­i­da­tion

As part of the process, a final val­i­da­tion check of each Soldier’s records must be per­formed. Records include: APFT, NCOES, col­lege records, awards and MOS qual­i­fi­ca­tions to include the slot or MOS posi­tion. Any dis­crep­an­cies will need to be investigated.

Holidays

More peo­ple will take time off at the end of the year or the hol­i­day sea­son. Between December 15^th and January 3^rd, there is a slow­down in pro­cess­ing any type of pro­mo­tion paper­work due to a (tem­po­rary) lack of personnel.

The EPS sys­tem is stan­dard through­out the National Guard. Therefore, the delays will be the same for any National Guard orga­ni­za­tion in any state.

Congratulations on your promotion.