A machine operator cuts a finger, gets three stitches, and is back on the line the next day. Somewhere, that case needs a case number, a description, a classification and a running day count — and it has to sit in the right log, at the right establishment, updated if the facts change later. That's the OSHA 300 Log: not a filing cabinet of incident reports, but a single ongoing, case-by-case ledger that most employers covered by 29 CFR Part 1904 have to keep, current, all year. This piece is the reference for what it actually contains, who has to keep one, and how the entries get built and amended — the kind of detail you want on hand when you're staring at a blank row wondering what goes in it.
What is the OSHA 300 Log, exactly?
The OSHA 300 Log — its formal name is the Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses — is where an employer records every case that clears the recordability test in 29 CFR 1904.7: work-related, a new case, and meeting at least one recording criterion (death, days away, restricted work or job transfer, medical treatment beyond first aid, loss of consciousness, or a significant diagnosis). If you haven't run that test yet, our recordability guide walks through it in order, and Job13's free recordability check will run it for a specific case and tell you plainly whether it belongs on the log — or flag it as needing review if the facts leave genuine judgement.
The log is not the same document as the Form 300A summary that gets posted every February, and it's not the same as the Form 301 incident report filed for each individual case. The 300 Log is the working record those two documents are built from. Every recordable case gets one line. That line stays open to amendment for as long as OSHA's five-year retention period runs, because a case classified one way in January can look different by June.
Is the OSHA 300 Log the same as a company incident log?
No, and this trips people up. Plenty of companies already run some kind of internal incident tracker — a spreadsheet, a safety-software module, a near-miss register — long before anyone asks about OSHA recordkeeping. Those tools can capture more than the 300 Log does: near misses, property damage, first-aid-only cases that never became recordable. The OSHA 300 Log is narrower and stricter. It only holds cases that meet the federal recordability test, it uses OSHA's specific column structure and classification codes, and it has legal retention and posting obligations attached that a homegrown tracker doesn't. You can build your internal log to feed the 300 Log, but the two aren't interchangeable, and an inspector asking for "your 300 Log" wants the OSHA-format one, not the incident spreadsheet next to it.
Who has to keep the OSHA 300 Log?
Most employers with more than 10 employees, in industries not on OSHA's partially exempt list, have to keep a 300 Log at each establishment. Two groups get relief:
- Employers with 10 or fewer employees at all times during the prior calendar year are exempt from routine recordkeeping, regardless of industry.
- Partially exempt industries listed in Appendix A to Part 1904 — mostly retail, service and finance sectors classed as lower-hazard — don't need to keep a routine log either.
Neither exemption is absolute. Both groups must still record — and report to OSHA under 1904.39 — any work-related fatality, in-patient hospitalisation, amputation, or loss of an eye, and must produce records on request if OSHA or the Bureau of Labor Statistics asks in writing for a specific survey. We go through the exempt list in more detail in our piece on exempt and partially exempt industries, and the traps that come with sitting only partly outside the rule in the partially exempt industries trap.
Multi-establishment employers keep a separate log per establishment, not one combined log. A case gets recorded where the employee actually worked when the injury happened, not at head office. A company with a warehouse in Ohio and a distribution centre in Texas keeps two 300 Logs, and an injury at the Texas site goes on the Texas log even if payroll and safety management sit in Ohio. This is one of the most common structural mistakes we see — a corporate safety team consolidates everything into one master spreadsheet for convenience, which is fine as an internal report, but the log of record still has to exist establishment by establishment.
What each column on the OSHA 300 Log actually captures
The form has a fixed structure. Here's what each part records and why it matters.
| Column | What it captures | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Case number | A unique, sequential identifier for the case at that establishment | Usually assigned in the order cases are opened; must stay consistent across the log, the 301 and the 300A |
| Employee name | The injured or ill employee's name | Replaced with "privacy case" for the six privacy categories under 1904.29(b)(7)(vi) |
| Job title | The employee's job title at the time of the event | Not their department — the actual role, e.g. "forklift operator," not "warehouse" |
| Date of injury or onset of illness | When the event happened, or when the illness was first diagnosed | For illnesses, this is often the date a physician identified work-relatedness, not the date symptoms began |
| Where the event occurred | The location within the establishment | E.g. "loading dock, bay 3" — specific enough to be useful for a hazard pattern, not just "onsite" |
| Description of injury or illness | A brief, plain description of the injury, the body part, and the object or exposure that caused it | Kept short but specific — "laceration to left index finger, box cutter" beats "hand injury" |
| Classification columns | Which outcome applies: death, days away from work, job transfer or restriction, or other recordable case | Exactly one classification per case, chosen by the most severe outcome that has occurred so far |
| Days away from work count | Calendar days the employee could not work at all | Counting starts the day after the injury, capped at 180 days |
| Days of job transfer or restriction count | Calendar days the employee worked but under restriction or in a different role | Also capped at 180 days, counted the same way |
| Injury or illness type | Which of the six standard categories the case falls into | Injury, skin disorder, respiratory condition, poisoning, hearing loss, or "all other illnesses" |
What each OSHA 300 Log column records, from case number through to the day counts.
Two things about the classification columns catch people out. First, only one classification applies per case, and it's the most severe outcome recorded to date — a case that starts as "other recordable" because it needed medical treatment beyond first aid gets reclassified to "days away from work" the moment the employee actually misses a shift because of it. Second, the day counts are running totals, not one-time entries. If an employee is still on restricted duty when the reporting year closes, the log carries an estimate and gets corrected once the restriction actually ends.
A worked example: how one case moves through the log
A machine operator at a metal-fabrication plant catches a hand on a die press guard and lacerates two fingers. The site nurse cleans the wound, applies Steri-Strips, and sends him home for the rest of the shift "to be safe." Nothing prescription, nothing beyond the wound coverings on OSHA's first aid list — see the full 14-item list if you want to check that call yourself.
On day one, the safety coordinator logs it: case number 14, job title "press operator," location "die press line, station 2," description "laceration, left hand, two fingers, die press guard." Classification: other recordable case, because sending him home for the rest of the shift alone doesn't yet establish a days-away or restricted-work outcome under 1904.7. Two days later, the employee returns but the plant physician puts him on light duty — no gripping tasks — for five calendar days while the wound closes. That's a restriction, so the entry gets amended: classification changes to job transfer or restriction, with a day count of 5. If he'd instead been unable to work at all for those five days, the classification would move to days away from work instead, and the case number and description stay the same — only the classification and day count change.
That's the routine flow of the log across a year: open the case as soon as it's recordable, using the best information available at the time, then correct it as new facts come in. Waiting to log a case until you're sure of the final outcome is not how the rule works — 1904.7 asks for the record to reflect current facts, updated as needed.
One EHS manager we spoke with put it this way: "The log isn't a scorecard you fill in once and file away. It's more like a patient chart — you open it on day one with what you know, and you go back and update it every time the story changes. The mistake people make is treating the first entry as final."
Where teams get this wrong
Amending an entry instead of updating it. When a case gets reclassified — say from "other recordable" to "days away" — the fix is to update the existing line, not create a new one. A duplicate entry for the same case throws off your totals and makes the 300A summary wrong.
Letting day counts go stale. The 180-day cap makes it easy to stop counting once a case looks "done," but restricted-work and days-away counts have to reflect what actually happened, not what was expected. If someone returns to full duty two weeks earlier than planned, the count needs correcting down; if a recovery drags on longer than expected, it needs correcting up — right up to the 180-day cap.
Logging a case at the wrong establishment. As covered above, the case belongs on the log for the establishment where the employee was working, not the one that manages payroll or safety centrally. This shows up most often with travelling crews, drivers, and staff on loan between sites.
Confusing privacy cases with anonymised cases generally. Only the six specific categories under 1904.29(b)(7)(vi) qualify for "privacy case" treatment in place of a name — intimate body part or reproductive system injuries, sexual assault, mental illness, HIV/hepatitis/TB, contaminated needlestick or sharps injuries, and cases where the employee voluntarily asks to have their name withheld. Blanking out a name for an ordinary injury because it feels sensitive isn't the rule; see our breakdown of privacy cases for the full list and how the substitute log is meant to work.
Treating the closed first aid list as a judgement call. Whether treatment counts as first aid isn't a matter of how minor it looked — it's whether it appears on OSHA's 14-item list. Confusing this with "medical treatment beyond first aid" under 1904.7 is one of the most common reasons a case ends up misclassified either way; first aid vs medical treatment has the full list.
How the log fits with the rest of your recordkeeping
The 300 Log feeds two other obligations directly. At year end, its totals roll up into the 300A summary — posted from 1 February through 30 April and signed by a company executive. And for establishments over OSHA's current size and industry thresholds, the underlying data now generally has to be submitted electronically through the Injury Tracking Application (ITA) — check OSHA's current establishment-size and industry thresholds, since they're revisited periodically, and OSHA's most recent ITA data collection cycles have continued to expand which establishments must submit case-level detail rather than summary totals only. Job13's ITA export is built to take log data straight into the format that submission expects, once you've paid to unlock the export.
Every entry ultimately traces back to a work-relatedness call under 1904.5 and a recording-criteria call under 1904.7 — get those two judgements right and the log entry mostly writes itself. Where a case is genuinely ambiguous, resist the urge to force a call either way. That's exactly the situation Job13 is built for: run the case through the free recordability check, and where the rule itself leaves room for judgement, it says so — "needs review" — rather than guessing on your behalf. See how a case would actually log at /recordable.
Frequently asked questions
Who keeps the OSHA 300 Log?
Employers with more than 10 employees, outside the partially exempt industries listed in Appendix A to Part 1904, keep a 300 Log at each establishment. Employers with 10 or fewer employees and those in partially exempt industries are excused from routine logging but still have to record and report any work-related fatality, in-patient hospitalisation, amputation, or loss of an eye.
What is the difference between the OSHA 300 Log and the 300A?
The 300 Log is the ongoing, case-by-case record kept throughout the year, with one line per recordable case. The 300A is the annual summary that totals those cases by category, gets certified by a company executive, and is posted publicly from 1 February to 30 April. See OSHA 300 Log vs 300A vs 301 for the full comparison, including where Form 301 fits in.
Can you amend an OSHA 300 Log entry after the year is closed?
Yes. Records must be kept for five years following the end of the calendar year they cover, and if new information changes a case's classification or day count within that window, the entry should be corrected. This is different from adding a case that was missed entirely, which also needs to happen as soon as the employer becomes aware of it.
Does a first-aid-only injury go on the OSHA 300 Log?
No. If the only treatment given falls within OSHA's 14-item first aid list under 1904.7(b)(5)(ii), the case isn't recordable on that basis alone. It only goes on the log if it separately meets a different criterion — days away from work, restricted duty, a significant diagnosis, and so on.
What is an OSHA 300 Log example of a "days away from work" case?
A worker who slips on a wet floor, fractures a wrist, and cannot work at all for six calendar days is a clear days-away case. The count starts the day after the injury, so if the injury happened on a Monday, day one of the count is Tuesday, running through to the day the employee returns to any work at all — capped at 180 days if the absence runs that long.
