How to Fill Out the OSHA 300 Log: The Complete Column-by-Column Guide

The OSHA 300 log — formally, the "Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses" — is the document at the center of your entire recordkeeping obligation. Every recordable incident that happens at your establishment goes on this log, and it stays there for five years. OSHA inspectors ask for it first. Insurers and general contractors ask for it during prequalification. And the data from it feeds directly into your 300A annual summary, your TRIR and DART rate calculations, and — for covered employers — your electronic submission to OSHA's Injury Tracking Application.

Despite its importance, the form itself is not complicated. It is a single page with thirteen columns. The challenge is not filling it out — it is filling it out correctly, on time, and consistently, and keeping it correct as cases evolve. This guide is the complete walkthrough: who must keep the log, what each column requires, worked example entries, how to fix the log when a case changes, and how the year-end totals flow into the rest of your compliance calendar.

Who Must Keep a 300 Log

Most employers with 11 or more employees at any point during the previous calendar year must maintain an OSHA 300 log. There are two categories of exceptions. First, employers in certain low-risk industries — listed in Appendix A to Subpart B of 29 CFR Part 1904 — are partially exempt from routine recordkeeping, though they must still report fatalities, hospitalizations, amputations, and losses of an eye. Second, employers with 10 or fewer employees throughout the entire previous calendar year are exempt from routine recordkeeping, with the same reporting exceptions. Both exemptions are covered in detail in our guide to who has to keep an OSHA 300 log.

There is an important caveat: even if you are normally exempt, the Bureau of Labor Statistics can require you to participate in their annual Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses. If you receive a written notification from BLS, you must keep records for that year regardless of your size or industry.

The Three Forms, and How They Fit Together

The 300 log is one of three forms that make up the OSHA recordkeeping system, and understanding the division of labor prevents most structural mistakes:

• The 300 log is the index. One line per recordable case, thirteen columns, running all year.
• The 301 incident report is the case file. Every line on the 300 log must have a matching 301 incident report (or an equivalent, such as a workers' comp first report that captures the same information) with the full narrative of what happened. It is due on the same 7-day clock as the log entry.
• The 300A is the year-end summary. In January you total the log's columns, certify the 300A annual summary, and post it from February 1 to April 30.

If you keep the discipline of "every case gets a log line and a 301 within seven days," the 300A largely writes itself in January.

One Log Per Establishment

You must maintain a separate OSHA 300 log for each physical establishment that is expected to be in operation for one year or longer. If your company operates three warehouses, each warehouse gets its own log. Employees at a temporary job site expected to last less than a year can be carried on the log of the establishment they report to. Multi-site employers face a handful of additional rules — traveling employees, centralized recordkeeping, per-establishment ITA submissions — covered in our guide to multi-establishment recordkeeping under 1904.30.

Before You Log Anything: Is the Case Recordable?

The 300 log only receives recordable cases, and recordability is its own three-step determination: did an injury or illness occur, was it work-related, and did it meet a recording trigger (death, days away, restricted work or job transfer, medical treatment beyond first aid, loss of consciousness, or a significant diagnosed injury or illness)? That decision tree is the subject of its own complete guide, and the single most litigated boundary — first aid versus medical treatment — has one too. If you want the determination run for you, question by question, our free recordability checker walks the same tree.

The rest of this guide assumes you have a recordable case in hand and shows you how to enter it.

The Seven-Day Rule

When a recordable injury or illness occurs, you must enter it on the 300 log — and complete the matching 301 incident report — within seven calendar days of receiving information that a recordable case has occurred (29 CFR 1904.29(b)(3)). This deadline runs from when you learn the case is recordable, not necessarily from the date of injury. If an employee goes to the doctor on Monday and you learn on Wednesday that the doctor prescribed medication — making the case recordable — your seven-day clock starts on Wednesday.

This is one of the most frequently cited violations because it is trivially easy for an inspector to verify. They compare the date of injury to the date the entry was made. If the gap exceeds seven days, it is a citable violation — up to $16,550 per instance.

Columns A Through F: Identifying the Case

The left side of the 300 log captures basic information about the employee and the incident. Each column has specific requirements:

Column A — Case Number

Assign a unique case number to each recordable incident. OSHA does not mandate a specific format, but most employers use a year-sequence pattern like 2026-001, 2026-002, and so on. Whatever system you use, each number must be unique within the calendar year and establishment. This number links the 300 log entry to the corresponding 301 incident report — and, for privacy concern cases, to the confidential name list.

Column B — Employee Name

Enter the full legal name of the injured or ill employee. There is one exception, under 29 CFR 1904.29(b)(7): for the six "privacy concern" case categories — an injury or illness to an intimate body part or the reproductive system; an injury or illness 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 requests that their name not be entered — you must write "privacy case" instead of the employee's name. You must also keep a separate, confidential list linking case numbers to employee names (1904.29(b)(6)).

Column C — Job Title

Enter the employee's job title at the time of the injury. Be specific enough to be meaningful — "Technician" is less useful than "HVAC Technician" or "Lab Technician." This information is used to identify whether certain job roles are disproportionately represented in your injury data.

Column D — Date of Injury or Illness Onset

For injuries, enter the date the incident occurred. For illnesses, enter the date of initial diagnosis or the date the employee first became aware of the condition, whichever comes first. If you cannot determine the exact date, use the best estimate available.

Column E — Where the Event Occurred

Describe the specific location within the establishment where the incident happened. Be as precise as practical. "Loading Dock B" is useful for identifying a hazard pattern. "Warehouse" is not. If the incident occurred off-site but during work-related activity, describe the location (e.g., "Customer site at 400 Main St, Suite 200").

Column F — Description of Injury or Illness

This is the most important column on the form for hazard analysis purposes. Describe the injury or illness, the body part affected, and the object or substance that caused it. OSHA wants enough detail to understand what happened. Good example: "Laceration to left index finger from box cutter while opening shipping carton." Poor example: "Cut on hand."

For privacy concern cases, you may use discretion in the description itself if the details would identify the employee even without the name.

Columns G Through J: Classifying the Case

Every recordable case must be classified into exactly one of four categories. You check the single column that reflects the most serious outcome of the case:

• Column G — Death: Check this if the employee died as a result of the work-related injury or illness. A fatality also triggers a separate, much faster obligation: you must report it to OSHA within eight hours — reporting and recording are two different duties on two different clocks.
• Column H — Days away from work: Check this if the employee missed one or more days of work because of the injury or illness (not counting the day of the injury itself).
• Column I — Job transfer or restriction: Check this if the employee remained at work but was placed on restricted duty or transferred to a different job.
• Column J — Other recordable cases: Check this if the case was recordable (e.g., medical treatment beyond first aid, loss of consciousness, or a significant diagnosed condition) but did not result in death, days away, or restriction/transfer.

You must select the most serious applicable outcome. If an employee initially receives medical treatment (Column J) but is later put on restricted duty, you cross out the check in Column J and place a new check in Column I. If the employee is eventually sent home to recover, you cross out Column I and check Column H. The classification must always reflect the most serious outcome as of the current date.

Columns K and L: Counting Days

If you checked Column H or Column I, you must enter the number of calendar days in Columns K and L respectively.

Column K captures the number of days the employee was away from work. Column L captures the number of days the employee was on job transfer or restricted duty. The counting rules are specific and frequently misunderstood:

• Do not count the day of the injury itself. Day counting begins the day after the incident.
• Count calendar days, not scheduled work days. Weekends, holidays, and days the employee was not scheduled to work all count if the employee would have been unable to work or was under restriction.
• Cap the count at 180 days per case. If the employee is still away or restricted after 180 days, enter 180 and stop counting.
• If an employee is on both days away and restricted duty at different points during recovery, enter the days away in Column K and the restricted days in Column L. The classification in Column H or I should reflect the most serious outcome.

Column M: Injury or Illness Type

The final section of the 300 log asks you to classify the case as either an injury or one of five illness categories:

• Column M-1 — Injury: Any wound or damage to the body resulting from a single instantaneous event in the work environment (cuts, fractures, burns, sprains, etc.).
• Column M-2 — Skin disorder: Conditions such as contact dermatitis, chemical burns to the skin, or rashes caused by workplace exposures.
• Column M-3 — Respiratory condition: Conditions such as silicosis, asbestosis, occupational asthma, or reactive airway disease from workplace inhalation exposures.
• Column M-4 — Poisoning: Disorders caused by ingestion, inhalation, absorption, or injection of toxic substances in the workplace.
• Column M-5 — Hearing loss: Recordable standard threshold shifts in hearing as measured by audiometric testing under 29 CFR 1904.10.
• Column M-6 — All other illnesses: Any work-related illness not covered by the categories above, including heat illness, bloodborne pathogen infections, and musculoskeletal disorders that develop over time.

Check exactly one column per case. If a case involves both an injury and an illness component, classify it based on the primary condition.

Three Worked Examples

Abstract rules become concrete on real entries. Here is how three common cases land on the log.

Example 1 — Laceration closed with sutures

A shipping clerk cuts his left index finger on a box cutter on March 3 and receives four sutures at an urgent care clinic the same day. He returns to regular duty the next morning.

Sutures are medical treatment beyond first aid, so the case is recordable. The entry: a new case number in Column A; the employee's name in Column B (no privacy category applies); "Shipping Clerk" in Column C; March 3 in Column D; "Packing station 2, north warehouse" in Column E; "Laceration to left index finger from box cutter while opening carton" in Column F. Classification: no death, no days away, no restriction — check Column J. Columns K and L stay empty. Type: an instantaneous event — check M-1.

Example 2 — Sprain with days away, then light duty

A warehouse worker sprains her lower back lifting a pallet on June 8. Her physician takes her off work June 9–11 (three calendar days, including a Saturday she was not scheduled to work), then releases her to light duty with a no-lifting restriction for the next ten days.

The entry: name, job title, date, location, and "Lower back sprain from lifting pallet at floor level" as usual. Classification: the most serious outcome is days away — check Column H (only H, even though a restriction also occurred). Column K gets 3 — the day of the injury does not count, but the unscheduled Saturday does, because day counts run on calendar days. Column L gets 10 for the restricted days. Type: M-1.

If the restriction is later extended, Column L must be updated; if she is taken off work again, the days are added to Column K. The entry follows the case, not the first version of the case.

Example 3 — Contaminated needlestick (privacy case)

A clinic assistant is stuck by a used needle while disposing of a sharps container on September 14 and starts post-exposure prophylaxis the same week. Under 29 CFR 1904.8, every needlestick contaminated with another person's blood or other potentially infectious material is recordable — no outcome trigger needs to be met.

This is also privacy category (v) under 1904.29(b)(7): Column B says "privacy case," not the employee's name, and the case number goes on the separate confidential list alongside the name. The description in Column F should be written so it does not identify the employee. Classification: no days away or restriction here — Column J. Sharps cases can also create a second entry on the separate Sharps Injury Log under the bloodborne pathogens standard — one incident, two logs.

Correcting and Updating the Log

The 300 log is a living document for its entire five-year retention period, and 29 CFR 1904.33(b)(1) is explicit about the mechanics: during the storage period you must update the log to include newly discovered recordable cases, and if the description or outcome of a case changes, you must remove or line out the original entry and enter the new information.

Three situations trigger an update:

• A case evolves. The Column G–J classification must always reflect the most serious outcome to date, and the day counts in K and L grow until the case closes or hits the 180-day cap.
• A case surfaces late. An occupational illness diagnosed in 2026 that traces to 2024 work goes on the 2024 log, not the current one — the log for the year the case belongs to is the one you correct.
• A case turns out not to be recordable. Line it out. A physician's second opinion that reclassifies treatment as first aid, or a work-relatedness determination that fails, removes the case — and your year-end totals should reflect that.

Only the 300 log carries this mandatory update duty. The 300A summary and the 301 reports may be updated, but 1904.33(b)(2) and (b)(3) do not require it. The full retention-and-updating rule — including which records must be produced in an inspection and how fast — is covered in our guide to the five-year retention rule.

Year-End: Totals, Certification, and the 300A Handoff

At the end of the calendar year, 29 CFR 1904.32 puts four duties on you: review the log to verify entries are complete and accurate, total each column into the 300A annual summary, certify the summary, and post it.

Two details catch employers here:

• The certification is not a formality. A company executive — the owner (for a sole proprietorship or partnership), a corporate officer, the highest-ranking official at the establishment, or that person's immediate supervisor — must certify that they reviewed the log and reasonably believe the summary is accurate. An office manager's signature does not satisfy 1904.32(b)(4).
• Zero cases still means a posted 300A. If you had no recordable cases, you enter zeros in every total column and post the summary anyway, February 1 through April 30.

Arithmetic matters more than it seems: an inspector checking your posted 300A against your 300 log will notice if the totals do not match, and a discrepancy is a red flag that invites a closer look at everything else.

For establishments over the size and industry thresholds of 1904.41, the same year-end data also goes to OSHA electronically — see the ITA portal submission walkthrough, and if you are not sure whether the mandate covers you, our free ITA submission checker resolves it from your headcount and NAICS code.

Paper, Spreadsheet, or Software: The Equivalent-Form Rule

You do not have to use OSHA's printed forms. Under 29 CFR 1904.29(b)(4) you may keep the records on an equivalent form — one that has the same information, is as readable and understandable, and is completed using the same instructions as the OSHA form it replaces. And 1904.29(b)(5) says you may keep the records on a computer, provided the system can produce the equivalent forms when they are needed — during an inspection, an employee access request, or posting season. The full electronic-recordkeeping rules — the equivalence test, the production deadlines, and the paper duties that survive the switch — are covered in our guide to keeping the 300 log electronically.

The official forms package (300, 300A, 301, with instructions and the worksheet) is free from OSHA at osha.gov/recordkeeping/forms. A spreadsheet that captures the same columns qualifies as equivalent — the compliance risk is not the medium, it is what spreadsheets silently allow: classifications that never get updated, day counts that stop accruing, and totals that drift from the entries beneath them.

Retention and Employee Access

You must retain your OSHA 300 log — along with the privacy case list, the 300A summaries, and the 301 reports — for five years following the end of the calendar year they cover. During that window the log stays alive under the update duty described above.

Current and former employees, their personal representatives, and their authorized employee representatives have the right to access the 300 log. You must provide a copy by the end of the next business day after a request is made. The 301 incident report is more restricted — an employee is entitled to their own case file, while a representative's copy is limited to the "Tell us about the case" section.

The Mistakes Inspectors Actually Catch

Recordkeeping citations cluster around a handful of failure modes — all of them visible to an inspector within minutes of opening your log. The five most common recordkeeping mistakes have their own post; in brief:

• Late entries — the injury date and entry date are both on the form; a gap over seven days is a self-documenting violation.
• Misclassified first aid — in both directions: recordable medical treatment kept off the log, and first-aid-only cases padded onto it.
• Stale classifications — cases that evolved after the initial entry but were never updated, breaking K/L counts and the DART rate downstream.
• 300A totals that don't reconcile to the log lines beneath them.
• Missing 301s — log lines with no case file behind them, discovered the moment an inspector picks a line and asks for its report.

Frequently Asked Questions

What goes on the OSHA 300 log?

Every work-related injury or illness that meets a recording trigger: death, days away from work, restricted work or job transfer, medical treatment beyond first aid, loss of consciousness, or a significant injury or illness diagnosed by a physician or other licensed health care professional. One line per case, entered within seven calendar days.

Do first-aid-only cases go on the log?

No. A case whose only treatment appears on OSHA's exhaustive first-aid list — and that involves no days away, restriction, or other trigger — is not recordable and should not be entered.

Do I need a 300 log if I have fewer than 11 employees?

If you had 10 or fewer employees at all times during the previous calendar year, you are exempt from routine recordkeeping — but not from the 8- and 24-hour severe-injury reporting duties, and not from keeping records if BLS selects you for its survey. Size is measured company-wide, not per location.

What is the difference between the 300, 300A, and 301?

The 300 is the running log (the index), the 301 is the per-case incident report (the case file), and the 300A is the year-end summary of the log's totals — the only one of the three that gets posted and, for covered employers, submitted electronically.

When is the 300 log "due"?

Never, in the filing sense — it is a running document. Each case must be entered within 7 calendar days of you learning it is recordable. The deadlines that do exist attach to the 300A: posted February 1 through April 30, and submitted through the ITA by March 2 for covered establishments.

Can I keep the 300 log electronically?

Yes. 1904.29(b)(5) allows computer-kept records as long as the system can produce equivalent forms — with the same information, readability, and instructions as OSHA's — whenever they are needed. See the complete electronic-recordkeeping guide for the production clocks and the posting duty that stays on paper.

Keep the Log an Asset, Not a Liability

Treat the 300 log as a monthly discipline rather than a January scramble: review open cases, update classifications and day counts, verify every line has its 301, and the year-end totals take care of themselves. The log you maintain this way does double duty — it satisfies an inspector, and it is the only dataset you own that shows where your workplace actually gets people hurt.

LogStead exists to make that discipline automatic: the recordability wizard runs the 1904 decision tree on each new case, day counts and classifications stay current as cases evolve, privacy cases are handled with the confidential list kept separately, and the 300A totals, certification workflow, and ITA-ready export are generated from the same log lines — so the numbers always reconcile. You can start by checking a single case with the free recordability checker.