The Debit Memo Working Group (DMWG) works to unify the travel industry by simplifying processes and forging new solutions related to debit memos.

DMWG stakeholders come from various segments of the travel industry—travel agencies, airlines, system providers and other key industry sectors. With a wealth of air travel industry experience and diversity, the DMWG, facilitated by ARC, tackles key issues related to debit memos, finding common solutions to optimize the way debit memos are handled.

Highlights

In December 2017, the Debit Memo Working Group voted to approve the first industrywide set of best practices for debit memos, achieving a milestone in the management of debit memos.

The Best Practices for Effective Debit Memo Resolution and Prevention include guidelines for airlines, travel agencies, global distribution systems (GDSs) and ARC. The goal of these best practices is to produce more effective, timely and predictable debit memo resolution, as well as the prevention of debit memos wherever possible.

The DMWG's Mission

The DMWG's mission is to improve the efficiency of the debit memo process, and ultimately reduce the volume of invalid memos, by working together for common solutions that benefit the industry as a whole.

How has the DMWG impacted the air travel industry?

The DMWG's work is ongoing, with meetings held every two months by phone, and twice annually in person. There have been a number of significant accomplishments since the DMWG was established in 2013. Here are a few highlights:

• The creation of an industrywide set of best practices for managing debit memos. The Best Practices for Effective Debit Memo Resolution and Prevention outlines responsibilities for travel agencies, airlines, GDSs and ARC, and its creation was the direct result of months of DMWG collaboration.
• The creation of standard debit memo reason codes. After manually reviewing over 44,000 memos to identify patterns and root causes in debit memos, the DMWG established standard debit memo reason codes that are now used throughout the industry. These standardized codes have now been implemented in both Memo Manager and Memo Analyzer.
• The launch of Memo Analyzer, an online tool that provides insight into memos and ticketing data for agents, carriers and system providers. As of August 2017, Memo Analyzer had mapped standard debit memo reason codes for 23 major airlines, with more airlines to be added in the near future.