‘A meeting is an event where minutes are taken and hours are wasted.’ While that sentiment rings true for many of us, meetings are an unavoidable part of professional life.
But a meeting is only as valuable as the action it inspires. This means key stakeholders need to know what was discussed, what decisions were made, and what’s happening next.
The thing is, trying to capture this key information during a meeting is challenging at the best of times. People talk over each other, go on tangents, and often lose sight of the meeting's purpose altogether.
That’s why taking detailed records of meetings, known as minutes, is so important. Meeting minutes provide structure to your meetings—saving time, boosting productivity, and ensuring the right outcomes.
However, without guidance or a regimented structure in place, taking those minutes can prove difficult.
If you’re responsible for taking minutes, you may struggle if the attendees talk too quickly, have accents, or stray from the agenda. Thankfully, these frustrations can easily be resolved.
We cover everything you need to know on how to write meeting minutes, with best practices and templates, and an introduction to an AI note-taking tool.
What are meeting minutes?
Meeting minutes—technically known as ‘minutes of meeting’ or m.o.m for short—provide a written record of what happens in a meeting.
As meeting minutes are an official record, they’re sometimes referred back to at a later date. Minutes are also recommended for legal reasons, especially for important board meeting discussions.
Fun fact: The word ‘minutes’ has nothing to do with time. Instead, it originates from the Latin word ‘minutia,’ meaning trifles or details.
Who is responsible for taking meeting minutes?
Does it take an expert in note-taking to capture everything discussed? Not necessarily. The responsibility typically falls on an executive assistant or a dedicated administrative or operations team member.
However, the responsibility can also be rotated among attendees if need be. While meeting minutes can be a challenge for the first time, it’s a task that anyone can do with a bit of practice.
Alternatively, you can use an AI note-taking tool like Notta, which records the conversations with audio (and video if you are holding virtual meetings) and generates a word-by-word transcript so you don’t miss any important details.
Notta helps you take meeting minutes more effectively, ensuring notes are clear, concise, and detailed.
And when the meeting is over, Notta automatically creates a meeting summary that includes action items and smart chapters to highlight key information for readers. All in all, Notta makes it much easier to create and circulate meeting minutes.
Effortlessly record meeting minutes—without touching your keyboard
Notta automatically generates clear, shareable meeting minutes so you can capture every action item while actually focusing on your meetings.
Three common types of meeting minutes
There are three different approaches to recording meeting minutes, depending on who they’re for and the type of meeting taking place.
1. Action minutes
Action minutes are the most common form of meeting minutes. They’re often brief and focused, as the purpose is to record key decisions made in the meeting. These minutes also include any tasks that are assigned to attendees.
Action minutes are most often seen in operational meetings, where objectives are simple and precise.
2. Verbatim minutes
Verbatim minutes are more detailed and include a word-for-word account of the entire meeting. While exhaustive, this approach makes it challenging to skim through notes for key information.
Verbatim minutes are crucial for high-stakes meetings, such as important negotiations or disciplinary meetings.
3. Discussion minutes
Discussion minutes record all discussion topics, along with any corresponding decisions and actions. These meeting minutes are in-depth and best suited for unstructured debate, which can make note-taking somewhat challenging.
Discussion minutes are useful for strategic planning, where it’s helpful to have the minutes to look back on at a later date.
Why should we take minutes for a meeting?
Well-crafted meeting minutes are helpful for a few reasons, as they:
Keep the team aligned. By providing an official record of what was discussed and agreed upon during a meeting, minutes allow the absent attendees to stay informed.
Increase accountability. Recording any actions that need to be taken, including who is responsible for each action and the deadline, can keep the participants accountable and ensure that tasks are completed on time.
Provide legal protection. In cases of disputes or conflicts, meeting minutes can be used as evidence—especially in the case of formal meetings like board meetings, staff meetings, and corporate meetings.
In short, meeting minutes provide several key benefits to individuals and organizations. In the next section, we’ll share a detailed guide for getting the most value from your meeting minutes.
How to take meeting minutes effectively (step-by-step guide)
If you’re in charge of taking meeting minutes, make sure to understand what’s expected of you before writing anything down. It’s also worth knowing the type of meeting and how that influences the type of minutes you’ll take.
Here are five steps to create organized, concise, and complete meeting minutes.
Choose a meeting minutes format
Preplan your notes
Document decisions and action items
Review and polish your notes
Share and store the meeting minutes
Step 1: Choose a meeting minutes format
The meeting agenda should determine your chosen format. Always come prepared with a template to make your note-taking more efficient and productive.
This is especially the case if meeting attendees flit from one topic of conversation to another, which can otherwise lead to vital information being missed. With a premade template, however, you can effortlessly add information to prepared headings and tables.
With a formatted template, you can focus on listening rather than drafting tables or subheadings. If you don’t have a meeting minutes template on hand, don’t worry—there’s a set of free templates at the end of this guide.
What should be included in the meeting minutes?
Name, date, time, and location of the meeting. This information should be at the top, so it can be identified at a glance.
Attendees. List the names of all attendees, including those who were present and who were unable to attend.
Purpose of the meeting. A short sentence about why this meeting was called and its desired outcomes.
Agenda items. Include a copy of the meeting agenda in the meeting minutes, outlining the topics to be discussed.
Discussion. Provide a summary of key discussion points and decisions raised during the meeting.
Action items. This should include who is responsible for each action item, the deadline for completion, and any follow-up actions required.
Adjournment. Indicate the time that the meeting was adjourned.
Signature. The minutes should be signed by the person who took the minutes and the chairperson of the meeting.
Never include the following in your meeting minutes
Arguments between meeting attendees
Personal views or opinions
Withdrawn motions
Detailed review of reports or presentations—focus on key points and highlights instead
Step 2: Preplan your notes
Preplanning your notes helps ensure you capture all necessary information. Most meetings provide an agenda beforehand, which you can use as a reference.
As the note-taker, this is a great opportunity to review any other attached documents to better understand the planned discussion.
From this information, you can document all predetermined information, like the date, location, and purpose of the meeting.
Speaking with the meeting chairperson is often necessary for meetings involving top executives, such as those with the C-suite. However, this might not be required for all business meetings.
Step 3: Document decisions and action items
Using a template, you can document all information discussed, decisions made, and action items planned during the meeting.
Even the most skilled note-takers struggle to capture everything, but a meeting minutes template will help you record as much as possible. Focus on these essentials.
Decisions: Record what decisions are made and the reasons behind them. If there is a voting process, note the outcome of the vote.
Action items: Document all the agreed-upon action items, including the responsible personnel and deadlines.
When starting out, it’s challenging to know what's important, leading to unnecessarily long meeting minutes. This is okay; as you gain experience, you'll get a feel for which details are crucial and which can be left out.
Pro tip: Always take notes on your computer instead of using pen and paper. This makes sharing easier and saves time, because you won't have to transfer written notes to an online document.
Step 4: Review and polish your notes
Once the meeting is over, record any additional notes while the information is still fresh in your mind. Don’t be afraid to ask attendees for clarification on anything that’s unclear in your recorded minutes.
Use this time to edit and refine the document so it’s easy to read and understand. Proofread your writing to remove any spelling errors, which are common when typing quickly.
Once your notes are clear and error-free, summarize them into a few paragraphs (if you’re not preparing verbatim minutes, that is). This allows others to quickly skim through old meeting notes without having to read large walls of text.
Step 5: Share and store the meeting minutes
You made it to the final step! Now you just need to share and store the meeting minutes. Distribute the document to all attendees, including those who were absent, as well as relevant stakeholders.
Notta allows you to easily export and share your minutes, with advanced options to tailor the distribution to your recipients' needs.
For casual meetings, copy and paste the critical decisions and actions into an email and forward it to your team. This ensures everybody has access to your meeting notes.
For formal meetings, like a quarterly business review, share the document via approved team collaboration software.
Always store the meeting minutes in a safe place, ideally with a backup should the original copy get lost or deleted.
For safe storage, consider adding the meeting minutes to your team wiki or knowledge base. That way, if someone needs to refresh their memory, they can easily search for specific meeting notes in the system. Most wikis use cloud storage, making them accessible to the whole team.
Notta: The easiest way to record meeting minutes
How can Notta help you or your administrative team to record meeting minutes more effectively?
Notta allows users to transcribe live meetings using AI, and delivers helpful summaries with key details organized clearly.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to recording meeting minutes effortlessly.
Step 1: Create a free Notta account
To get started, first create a Notta account. This is free and only takes a few minutes. You can sign up with your Gmail account, Microsoft, Apple, or via SSO.
After signing up, you’ll receive a verification code. Enter this code on the sign-up page along with a password to complete your account creation.
Next, you’ll have the option to choose the type of work you do, your role, and a name for your ‘workspace’. You can use the platform as an individual or as a team.
Step 2: Navigate to your dashboard and click on ‘Transcribe live meetings’
Once you’re logged into the Notta platform, navigate to the main dashboard. You’ll find a ‘Transcribe live meetings’ button on the right side of the dashboard, which you can use to start taking minutes right away.
You also have the option to record audio or video and can import files for transcribing.
Step 3: Paste your meeting link into Notta and click ‘Transcribe now’
After clicking the transcribe live meetings button, you can then paste your meeting invite link into Notta. You can post meeting links from commonly used online meeting spaces, including Microsoft Teams and Zoom.
You can opt for monolingual transcription or, as an optional add-on, bilingual transcription. You can choose from a variety of languages.
Then, the advanced options allow you to change your AI bot name and record online meetings via video.
Step 4: Access the transcript after the meeting finalizes
Once the meeting is over, you can access the final transcript. This will appear on your screen as soon as you exit the meeting.
From here you can perform various tasks, such as editing or organizing the transcription, before exporting and sharing it with the relevant individuals.
Step 5: Use Notta’s AI-generated meeting summary to organize key ideas
Notta’s AI technology organizes your meeting notes and provides helpful summaries that highlight key ideas discussed. This generative AI functionality is especially helpful for note-takers, as it streamlines all parts of the minute-taking process.
You can also generate minutes and notes from pre-recorded meetings and videos, which is useful for historic meetings.
Step 6: Edit into scannable meeting minutes
Once Notta’s AI has organized your notes, it’s time for the human side of note-taking to shine—editing it all into scannable meeting minutes.
As you can see, the process of taking meeting minutes is far more efficient as AI does most of the work for you.
Quicker (and more accurate) meeting minutes
With Notta, you can easily generate meeting minutes, turning spoken content into written records with 98.86% accuracy.
Best practices for writing meeting minutes
Now that you know how to take meeting minutes step-by-step, here are some best practices to help you become a pro.
Be clear and concise. Meeting minutes should be easy to read and understand. Use clear language and avoid unnecessary jargon.
Be objective. Meeting minutes should be an objective record of the proceedings. Avoid personal opinions and stick to the facts.
Ask for clarification. As the minute-taker, don't be afraid to ask for clarification when necessary to avoid misinformation.
Record the meeting. If you are allowed, record the meeting audio using your phone or another recording device. This will aid your minutes-taking task.
Use AI for automation. With Notta’s AI technology, you can automate the entire process and streamline your admin work after the meeting has finished.
Free meeting minutes templates
Our team has put together a few meeting minutes examples, covering a variety of meeting types. You can apply these templates directly, or customize them to suit your needs.
1. General meeting minutes template
[Meeting name]
The meeting was held on [insert date] at [insert time] via [insert platform].
Attendees
Agenda
[Insert agenda item 1]
[Insert agenda item 2]
[Insert agenda item 3]
Discussion
[Insert discussion point 1]
[Insert discussion point 2]
[Insert discussion point 3]
Action Items
[Item 1] assigned to [Name]
Next Meeting
The next meeting will be held on [insert date and time] via [insert platform].
Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned at [insert time].
2. Board meeting minutes template
Meeting Information
Meeting date: [insert date of meeting]
Meeting time: [insert time of meeting]
Meeting location: [insert location of meeting]
Attendees
Chairperson: [insert name of Chairperson]
Secretary: [insert name of Secretary]
Presiding officers: [insert names of presiding officers]
Absent board directors: [insert names of absent board directors]
Agenda items
Call to order
Approval of previous meeting minutes
Reports
President's report
Treasurer's report
Committee reports
Old business
[insert old business item 1]
[insert old business item 2]
[insert old business item 3]
New business
[insert new business item 1]
[insert new business item 2]
[insert new business item 3]
Announcements
Action items
[insert action item 1]
[insert action item 2]
[insert action item 3]
Next meeting
Date: [insert date of next meeting]
Time: [insert time of next meeting]
Location: [insert location of next meeting]
Meeting adjourned
The meeting was adjourned at [insert time the meeting was adjourned].
3. Annual meeting minutes template
Meeting Information
Meeting date: [insert date of meeting]
Meeting time: [insert time of meeting]
Meeting location: [insert location of meeting]
Attendees
[Name]—Role, [Name]—Role, [Name]—Role
Absentees
[Name]—Role, [Name]—Role, [Name]—Role
Agenda
State of organization
Financial review
Strategic initiatives
Recognitions and rewards
Announcements
Any other business
Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned at [insert time].
4. Training meeting minutes template
Meeting Information
Meeting date: [insert date of meeting]
Meeting time: [insert time of meeting]
Meeting location: [insert location of meeting]
Attendees
[Name]—Role, [Name]—Role, [Name]—Role
Absentees
[Name]—Role, [Name]—Role, [Name]—Role
Agenda
Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned at [insert time].
Simplify meeting minutes with Notta
So remember: if you're looking to implement meeting minutes into your work processes, the five-step method listed above is a solid starting point.
To simplify note-taking even further while guaranteeing high-quality notes for every meeting, integrate a platform like Notta into your process. Not only does Notta take minutes for you, but minutes are also fully customizable once the meeting has finished.
For businesses conducting multiple meetings every day, Notta’s AI-powered platform helps lighten the workload. And because Notta scales with your business, you’ll have a reliable meeting minutes solution as your company grows.
Capture every detail of your meetings with Notta
Notta’s automated transcription and summaries mean you never miss a word, making your meeting minutes more accurate and thorough.
