A new safety coordinator opens the recordkeeping folder for the first time and finds three forms with almost the same name: 300, 300A, 301. One gets posted on the breakroom wall every spring. One never leaves the file cabinet. One has to be filled out within a week of every recordable case. Mixing them up is one of the most common recordkeeping mistakes we see, and it's an easy one to fix once you see the three forms side by side. The OSHA 300 and 300A logs, plus Form 301, work together as a single system — this post untangles what each one does, who reads it, and how one real injury moves through all three.
The three forms at a glance
Every recordable case touches all three forms, but each one answers a different question. Form 301 asks what happened to this one person. The OSHA 300 Log asks what's happened at this site this year, case by case. The 300A asks how many, in total, and of what kind. Miss that distinction and you'll file the wrong thing at the wrong time — or worse, post something that was never meant to go on a wall.
| Form | Purpose | When completed | Who sees it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Form 301 — Injury and Illness Incident Report | Detailed record of one specific case: what happened, what the employee was doing, what caused it, treatment given | Within 7 calendar days of learning the case is recordable | Kept on file; not posted. Available to OSHA, the employee involved, and (with identifying details redacted where required) employee representatives |
| OSHA 300 Log | Running, case-by-case list of every recordable injury and illness at the establishment for the year | Updated continuously as cases occur and as facts change (e.g. days away are finalised) | Kept on file, not posted; must be made available to employees, former employees, and their representatives on request, and to OSHA on request |
| Form 300A — Summary | Annual roll-up of the 300 Log's totals: case counts by category, days away/restricted/transferred, injury and illness types | Prepared once a year, after the log is finalised, certified by a company executive | Posted publicly 1 February to 30 April in a conspicuous, visible location — every employee sees it, even in a year with zero cases |
OSHA 300 and 300A logs plus Form 301, compared by purpose, timing and audience.
Notice the pattern: detail flows upward. Form 301 captures everything about one injury. The 300 Log strips that down to one line per case. The 300A strips the log down to totals. By the time a number reaches the 300A, most of the human detail behind it is gone — which is exactly why the other two forms still have to exist and still have to be kept on file.
Form 301: the incident report
Form 301, the Injury and Illness Incident Report, is the source document. Every recordable case gets one, and it has to be completed within 7 calendar days of the employer learning the case meets a recording criterion under 1904.7. It asks for specifics: the employee's job title, what they were doing right before the incident, what happened, the object or substance that harmed them, and what treatment they got.
A workers' compensation form, an insurance form, or another incident report can substitute for Form 301, as long as it captures the same information. That's a genuine option for employers whose comp carrier already collects it — but "equivalent" means equivalent in substance, not just a different form with a similar name. If your workers' comp intake skips the "what was the employee doing" narrative, it isn't a substitute yet.
Form 301 is never posted. It stays in the employer's files, generally for five years, and gets pulled out for an OSHA inspection, a records request from the employee it concerns, or a review by an employee representative. It's the form most likely to get treated as optional paperwork, and it's the one that matters most when someone asks "what actually happened here?"
Is Form 301 required for every recordable case?
Yes. Every case that lands on the OSHA 300 Log needs a matching Form 301 (or an accepted equivalent) on file. There's no size or industry carve-out for the 301 itself the way there is for some recordkeeping duties — see exempt and partially exempt industries for where those apply — the 301 requirement rides along with the recording requirement itself.
The OSHA 300 Log: the running record
The 300 Log is where the case actually gets logged. One line per recordable injury or illness, updated through the year: employee name (unless it's a privacy case), job title, date, where it happened, a short description, which outcome category it falls into (death, days away, restricted work or transfer, other recordable case), and — if applicable — how many days away or restricted.
The 300 Log isn't static. If a case starts as "other recordable" and the employee later goes on light duty, the log gets updated to reflect the restricted-work outcome. If days-away counts change because the employee stays out longer than first expected, the log gets corrected. That's part of why the log has to stay current all year rather than being assembled once in December — see our full walkthrough in the OSHA 300 Log explained for how the entries actually get built from the underlying determination.
Getting a case onto the log in the first place depends on the three-part recordability test: work-relatedness under 1904.5, whether it's a new case, and whether it meets a 1904.7 criterion. If you're not sure a case clears that test, Job13's free recordability check walks the same test the regulation sets out and flags "needs review" rather than guessing when the facts leave room for judgement.
Like Form 301, the 300 Log is not posted. But it isn't locked away either — current and former employees, and their representatives, can ask to see it, and OSHA can request it during an inspection. Treating it as a private internal document that nobody outside safety ever sees is a common misconception, and it's worth knowing the access rules before an employee asks.
Who is allowed to see the OSHA 300 Log?
Current employees, former employees, and their personal representatives have a right to see the establishment's 300 Log, with some limits around privacy-case entries. OSHA can also request it at any time, not just during a walkthrough inspection. That access right is separate from the 300A's mandatory public posting — the log itself is available on request, not displayed.
Form 300A: the annual summary
The 300A is the only one of the three forms most employees will ever actually read, because it's the only one posted. It rolls up the finalised 300 Log into totals: number of deaths, number of cases with days away from work, number with job transfer or restriction, number of other recordable cases, total days away, total days restricted or transferred, and a breakdown by injury/illness type.
It gets posted from 1 February through 30 April of the year after the year it covers, in a place employees will actually see it — a breakroom, a shared noticeboard, wherever site-wide notices normally go. That requirement holds even when the count is zero. A quiet year still gets a posted 300A saying so; see 300A posting requirements for the specifics on placement and timing. A company executive has to certify the 300A as accurate and complete before it goes up, which is a meaningful signature — not a formality, since it puts a named person's judgement behind the year's numbers.
The totals on the 300A also feed two numbers safety teams get asked about constantly: Total Recordable Incident Rate and DART rate. TRIR is recordable cases times 200,000, divided by total hours worked; DART is the same formula using only the days-away/restricted/transferred subset. Our guides on TRIR calculation and the DART rate walk through both in detail, and Job13's rate calculator will run them directly off your log data.
Does the OSHA 300A need to be posted even with zero recordable cases?
Yes. The posting requirement doesn't depend on having anything to report. An establishment with no recordable injuries or illnesses for the year still posts a 300A showing zeros across the board, certified the same way as any other year, for the same 1 February to 30 April window.
How one incident moves through all three forms
Here's how it actually plays out on a real case. A warehouse associate, restocking a high shelf, has a pallet shift and catches her hand between the pallet and the rack. She's taken to urgent care, gets four stitches, and her doctor keeps her off lifting duty for six days while the wound closes.
Form 301, filed within 7 days. The safety coordinator records the specifics: date and time, what she was doing (restocking, using a pallet jack), what happened (pallet shifted, hand caught against the rack), the object involved (the pallet and rack), and the treatment (sutures, six days of restricted duty, no lost work days). Sutures put this over the first-aid line on their own — a butterfly bandage would have been first aid, stitches aren't — and the restricted duty confirms it under 1904.7(b)(4) regardless.
OSHA 300 Log, updated the same week. One line goes on the log: date, job title, brief description, "restricted work or job transfer" checked, six days entered in the restriction column. If her light-duty period later runs longer than expected, that day count gets corrected on the log — it isn't locked in once written.
Form 300A, the following spring. Her case becomes one line inside a total: one case with job transfer or restriction, six restricted days added to the site's yearly total, filed under the "cut, laceration" injury type. Nobody reading the posted 300A in the breakroom sees her name, her job title, or what actually happened — only that the establishment logged one restricted-work case that quarter. The chain runs 301 to 300 to 300A, each step losing detail and gaining scale.
One EHS manager we spoke with put it this way: "The 301 is where you prove you understood the injury. The 300 Log is where you prove you're tracking it consistently. The 300A is the only one anyone outside safety will ever read, so it had better tie back cleanly to the other two." That's a fair summary of why all three exist rather than just the summary sheet — an inspector, or an employee's lawyer, can ask to see the paper trail behind any number on the wall.
Where teams get this wrong
Treating Form 301 as optional. Teams that use a workers' comp form as their "301 equivalent" sometimes stop there, without checking the comp form actually captures everything 301 requires — the narrative of what the employee was doing and what caused it, specifically. If your comp intake is just claim numbers and treatment codes, it isn't equivalent yet.
Confusing the 300A with the 300 Log. These get referred to interchangeably in casual conversation, but only the 300A gets posted. Posting the actual 300 Log — with names, dates, and descriptions of every case — puts information on the wall that was never meant to be public in that form, and it's a mistake that's surprisingly easy to make when a template just says "post your OSHA log."
Missing the update step. The 300 Log isn't a write-once document. When a days-away case's actual return date lands later than first estimated, or a case reclassifies from "other recordable" to "restricted work" once the doctor's note comes in, the log has to be corrected. Filing a case once in January and never touching it again is one of the more common gaps we see.
Using the wrong form for a state-plan equivalent. States that run their own OSHA-approved plans sometimes require their own version of these forms, or additional state-specific fields. Confirm your state plan's exact requirements directly — our comparison of Cal/OSHA and federal OSHA covers one common example, but Job13 itself checks recordability against the federal rule at 29 CFR Part 1904 only, not state-plan variations.
Skipping the executive certification. The 300A needs a genuine sign-off from a company executive — an owner, an officer, or the highest-ranking site official — not a delegated signature from whoever happened to compile the numbers. It's a small step that's easy to overlook under a spring deadline, and it's one OSHA does check for.
Recordkeeping citations have been trending upward across recent years, and missing or incomplete 301s and 300 Log entries are a recurring theme in that enforcement activity — worth knowing before you assume a thin file will go unnoticed. It's also worth remembering these three forms cover recordkeeping, not the separate and much faster duty to report certain severe cases directly to OSHA — deaths and in-patient hospitalisations, for instance, follow their own clock under 1904.39, independent of when the paperwork gets filed.
If your establishment size or industry crosses the current electronic submission thresholds, some or all of this data also has to go to OSHA through the Injury Tracking Application — check OSHA's current establishment-size and industry thresholds, since they're revisited periodically. Our ITA electronic submission guide covers what gets submitted and how the process works.
Before any of these forms gets filled in, the real question is whether a given case is recordable at all. If you're staring at a borderline injury and not sure which way it falls, check it against the actual rule for free at Job13 — it runs the same 1904.7 test outlined here and tells you plainly when the facts leave room for judgement, rather than guessing on your behalf. This post is informational and isn't legal advice.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between OSHA 300 and 300A?
The OSHA 300 Log is the detailed, case-by-case running record kept privately on file all year; the 300A is the annual summary of that log's totals, posted publicly from 1 February to 30 April, including in years with zero recordable cases.
Is OSHA Form 301 the same as a workers' comp report?
It can be, if the workers' comp form (or another incident report) captures the same information Form 301 requires — including what the employee was doing and what caused the injury. If it doesn't cover that detail, it isn't an accepted substitute and a separate 301 is still needed.
How long do I have to complete Form 301 after an incident?
Seven calendar days from when the employer learns the case is recordable, not seven days from the date of injury. If it takes time to confirm a case meets a recording criterion, the clock starts once that's established.
Does the OSHA 300A need to be posted if there were no recordable injuries?
Yes. A 300A showing all zeros still gets posted in the same 1 February to 30 April window, certified by a company executive the same way as any other year.
Who can see the OSHA 300 Log versus Form 301?
Current and former employees and their representatives can request to see the OSHA 300 Log, and OSHA can request it during an inspection. Form 301 is more restricted — it's available to OSHA and generally to the employee the record concerns, but it isn't posted or made broadly available the way the log is on request.
