How to Write Meeting Minutes: Steps, Template and Example

To write meeting minutes, record who attended, a short summary of each agenda item, the exact wording of every decision, and each action with an owner and a due date. Write them up within a day or two of the meeting, send the draft to the chairperson, and have the next meeting approve them as a true record.

That is the whole job. Doing it well is mostly about knowing what to leave out, using the same structure every time, and capturing decisions while they are still being made. This guide covers how to take minutes during the meeting, what to include, a step-by-step method, a template you can copy and a worked example.

What are meeting minutes?

Meeting minutes are the official written record of a meeting. They show who was there, what was considered, what was decided, and who agreed to do what by when. Once approved, they become the version of events the organisation relies on, including for people who were not in the room.

Minutes are not the same as meeting notes or a transcript. Notes are informal and written for yourself. A transcript captures every word. Minutes sit in between: they are selective, neutral and formal, and the group approves them. If you are not sure which one you need, our guide to meeting notes vs minutes vs summaries explains the difference.

How formal they need to be depends on the meeting. A weekly team check-in can use a light format. Board meetings, AGMs, school governing body meetings and body corporate meetings usually need the full structure, because members, auditors or a regulator may rely on the minutes later. Many of these organisations also have their own rules for minutes in their constitution, memorandum of incorporation or governing law, and where those rules exist they take priority over general advice. South African companies are a clear example: the Companies Act requires minutes of board and committee meetings, and they must be kept for seven years.

What to include in meeting minutes

Most minutes, from a team meeting to a board meeting, are built from the same parts. Use this as a checklist when you set up your template.

What you leave out matters as much. Minutes should not include side conversations, personal opinions about people, jokes, or a blow-by-blow account of the debate. Record that the meeting discussed the budget and what it decided, not that two people argued about it for twenty minutes. Unless your organisation's convention is to attribute comments, write "the meeting noted" rather than recording who said what.

Sensitive matters, such as a staff or learner issue, are often recorded briefly in the open minutes and in more detail in a confidential annexure that only the people entitled to see it receive.

How to write meeting minutes, step by step

Two habits make the biggest difference. First, sit near the chairperson, so you can ask for a decision to be repeated without interrupting the flow. Second, keep a running list of actions on a separate page as they come up, because it is much harder to dig them out of your notes afterwards.

If the meeting is recorded, with everyone's knowledge, you no longer depend on memory for the exact wording of a resolution. You can check the recording or the transcript before you finalise the minutes. NoteWave keeps the transcript close at hand while you correct the minutes, so you can check a resolution without replaying the whole recording.

Meeting minutes template

Copy this into Word or Google Docs and replace the text in brackets. Remove the sections your meeting does not need, but keep the order the same from one meeting to the next.

[ORGANISATION NAME]
Minutes of the [name of meeting]

Date: [day month year]
Time: [start time] to [end time]
Venue: [place, or video platform]
Chairperson: [name]
Minute taker: [name]

Present: [names]
Apologies: [names]
Absent: [names]
Quorum: [confirmed / not required]

1. Opening and welcome
[Who opened the meeting, and at what time.]

2. Approval of the previous minutes
The minutes of the meeting held on [date] were approved [without changes / with these corrections: ...].
Proposed: [name]   Seconded: [name]

3. Matters arising
[Progress on actions from the previous meeting.]

4. [Agenda item]
Discussion: [Two or three sentences.]
Decision: [Exactly what was agreed.]
Action: [Task] | Owner: [name] | Due: [date]

5. [Agenda item]
Discussion:
Decision:
Action:

6. General
[Other matters raised, or None.]

7. Next meeting
[Date, time and venue.]

8. Closure
The meeting closed at [time].

Approved as a true record:

Chairperson: ______________________   Date: ____________

Governance meetings follow a slightly different order and vocabulary. Our guide to writing SGB meeting minutes covers school governing bodies, and how to choose the right minutes format compares formats for other kinds of meeting. If you would rather start from a draft, NoteWave's free generator has presets for board meetings, school governing bodies and body corporate AGMs.

Example of meeting minutes

Here is the template filled in for a short, fictional operations meeting. Notice how little of the conversation survives: one or two sentences of context, then the outcome.

Every decision can be read on its own, months later, by someone who was not there. Every action has one owner, not "the team", and a real date. That is the test to apply to your own minutes before you send them.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Writing a transcript. Long minutes get skimmed and the decisions get lost. Summarise the discussion and record the outcome.
• Vague actions. "Follow up on the quotes", with no owner or date, rarely happens. Name a person and a date every time.
• Waiting too long. After a week you are reconstructing the meeting instead of recording it. Aim for 48 hours.
• Recording opinions. "Pieter was unhappy with the courier" is not a minute. "The meeting discussed late deliveries" is.
• Skipping approval. Unapproved minutes are only a draft. Put the approval of the previous minutes on every agenda.

Writing minutes with AI

If you record the meeting, an AI meeting assistant can produce most of the first draft. NoteWave records in the browser or on your phone, joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet calls, or takes an uploaded recording. It transcribes the meeting with speakers, then drafts formal minutes with resolutions, owners and due dates that you can check, edit and export to PDF or Word.

Here is the moment behind item 2 of the example above, as it would appear in a NoteWave transcript. Like the minutes, it is invented.

You still read the draft before it goes out, exactly as you would check minutes written by hand. The difference is that NoteWave checks facts such as attendance, quorum, resolutions and due dates against the recording, and lists anything it could not find for you to confirm. See how it works on the AI meeting minutes page. If you already have rough notes and only need them structured, the free meeting minutes generator works without an account. You can try NoteWave free, and the plans are on the pricing page.