My husband just received an email saying our travel voucher has been settled and it says The amount due the U.S. is $314.90 does this mean we pay them or they are paying us? He isnt here right now so I cant ask him also we did a dity move from fort drum to fort riley, is this the payment for that or for actual travel. Im so confused, we took an advance for the travel and dity 

I interpret this to mean you owe them. 

i wonder why in the world would we owe them, ugh i hate this crap 

First: How much weight did you estimate, and how much was your actual weight? I ask because if your estimated weight was less than your actual weight, then you owe.

Transportation bases your advance on the amount of weight that you tell them you'll have. You can go over that estimated amount as long as it isn't over your total allowance, but if you come in under that amount then you'll owe--because then that means they paid you more than what you were allowed.

When doing a DITY, it's always important to estimate way, way under what you think you'll have. The problem with doing that is that you won't get as much money upfront, and many people need their advance money to rent the truck, buy boxes, etc. But it's better to scrimp and save on the front end than the back end, because on the back end you can end up owing.

It's really easy to look at an entire house and think you have more weight than you actually do. When we did our DITY we were authorized 13,500 lbs (and thought we had over that amount) but we told Transportation that we had 7,000 lbs, just in case. We rented a 28' truck and could barely fit it all in so we ended up getting rid of a lot of things--and we ended up only having about 11,500 lbs. We thought we had waaaaay more than that. Thank God we did not tell them we had our full weight allowance upfront, because we would have owed the Army a lot of money.

I am sorry if you will really have to pay. It's a good lesson for the future, though. I personally will never do a DITY again. We made good money off it but when you count the labor I just don't find it worth it. 

My husband called DFAS and the reason it is saying we owe is because part of our paper work was never sent we turned them in here so travel had to resend it again today, but we dont actually owe, they owe us money once they get ALL the paper work that was suppose to be sent the first time. Wish they could let a person know that something is missing, instead of just settling it with an outstanding amount. We turned everything in on our end and cant control what happens after that. SMH 

Well, that stinks.

A lot of the Transportation offices are incompetent like that because they're overwhelmed. No excuse, but you do have to ride them at times. Glad everything worked out :).