PERSTEMPO and Your Deployment Record

What PERSTEMPO Is and Why You Should Care

PERSTEMPO counts the days you spend away on official duty, in housing other than where you normally live. The Marine Corps tracks it per Marine, not per unit.

Per MARADMIN 436/26MARADMIN 436/26 paragraph 7.b, you are expected to review your own PERSTEMPO data periodically. Two reasons to do it.

• Your record feeds Special Leave Accrual consideration. An undercount costs you leave you earned.
• Your record feeds the 400-day threshold. When your command projects you crossing it, they request a waiver from Manpower and Reserve Affairs on your behalf. An overcount triggers a waiver nobody needed. An undercount hides a crossing your command should have managed.

MCTFS is the system of record. What is in MCTFS is what counts, so what is missing from MCTFS does not exist.

How to Pull Your Report

Marine Online. Three clicks.

1. Log into MOL.
2. Go to Personal Information.
3. Open Personal Reports, then PERSTEMPO Report.

Check it after every deployment, every exercise, and every block of TDY. Checking once a year means reconstructing travel you already forgot.

The Day Away Rule

Read this before you decide your record is wrong. The counting rule surprises most Marines.

• An event has to span more than one calendar day. Leave and return the same day, and it counts for nothing.
• A day away does not need a full 24 hours.
• Your departure day counts as a full day away.
• Your return day does not count.

You leave Monday morning and return Tuesday afternoon. That is one day away, Monday. Not two.

What Counts Toward the Threshold

Two kinds of events show up in your record. Only one kind counts toward the 400-day threshold.

Counts (deployment type)

• Operations, including contingency, humanitarian, counterdrug, peacekeeping, and forward-presence operations.
• Exercises, whether joint, combined, Service, or NATO.
• Unit training away from your permanent duty location.
• Mission support TDY.
• Home station training or the local operating area of your ship.
• Hospitalization away from your permanent duty station or homeport.

Does not count (non-deployment type)

• Individual training, including school seats.
• Duty in garrison.
• Hospitalization near your permanent duty station.
• Disciplinary events.
• Reserve inactive duty training, muster duty, and funeral honors duty.

Both kinds get reported. Only the first kind adds to the threshold sum. Seeing a school seat in your record is correct, and it adds nothing to your 400-day count.

Reserve Marines

You sit in PERSTEMPO status on any day when, under orders not establishing a PCS, you perform active duty at a location other than your permanent training site and sits either 100 or more miles or 3 or more hours travel time from your permanent civilian residence.

Measure from where you live, not from your reserve center. Marines who drive a long way to drill are the most likely to have this one reported wrong.

Fixing a Record You Believe Is Wrong

Per MARADMIN 436/26 paragraph 7.b, when you find a discrepancy or a missing TDY period, contact your S-1 or your local servicing administration section.

Bring the documents, not the memory.

1. Pull the orders for the period in question. Deployment orders, TDY orders, or the exercise tasking.
2. Write out the departure and return dates.
3. Apply the day away rule yourself. Subtract the return day. Confirm the event spanned more than one calendar day.
4. Take the orders and your count to the S-1.

Your S-1 works the correction with the Manpower Information Systems Support Office, the Admin Assist Unit, or a Marine Corps Administrative Analysis Team. When the count stays contested, your commanding officer requests adjudication from Manpower and Reserve Affairs. That decision is final.

What Happens Near the Threshold

The threshold is 400 deployment days away in the preceding 730 days. You do not submit anything. Your command does.

• Your command is expected to spot a projected crossing 120 days before the event.
• Your command submits a waiver request to the Deputy Commandant for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, through the chain and through the first General Court-Martial Convening Authority.
• The request has to explain why you specifically are essential and how the command will limit the time you spend past the threshold.
• The same 120-day window exists so your Special Leave Accrual consideration has time to process under DOWI 1327.06.

Approval comes before you cross, not after. If you believe you are tracking toward 400 days and nobody has raised it, raise it with your S-1.

Where to Go Next on This Site

• High-Deployment Allowance covers the pay tied to a separate but similar day threshold.
• Special Leave Accrual covers the leave protection tied to qualifying duty.
• Hostile Fire Pay and Imminent Danger Pay covers the deployment pays running alongside your PERSTEMPO record.

Related Roles

• Your S-1 reports every event into MCTFS and pulls the monthly monitoring report.
• Your commander manages the schedule and signs the waiver request when you project past 400 days.