Meeting Minutes Template (With an Example and How to Take Them)
By the SystemaFlow team · Updated November 2026 · Share this
A week after the meeting, someone asks who was meant to call the landlord about the lease. The notes say "Discussed office move. Agreed to look into it." Three people were in the room, and each thought one of the others had it.
Meeting minutes are a short written record of who attended, what was decided and the actions agreed, each with one owner and a due date. You don't need a transcript of who said what. Take them on a template that follows the agenda, read the decisions and actions back before people leave, and send them within a working day.
Below is a template you can copy, a filled-in example, how to take minutes well and what to do with them afterwards.
The meeting minutes template
Copy this into Word, Google Docs, Notion or wherever your team keeps its records. It follows the same layout as our meeting agenda template, so you can prepare the top half before the meeting and fill in the rest as you go.
MEETING: [Name] DATE AND TIME: [Day, date, start and finish] PLACE: [Room or link] CHAIR: [Name] MINUTES: [Name] ATTENDEES: [Names] APOLOGIES: [Names] OBJECTIVE: [What the meeting set out to produce] ACTIONS FROM LAST MEETING Action Owner Done? Close / Carry / Drop [Action] [Name] [Y/N] [ ] AGENDA ITEMS # Item Type Outcome (one or two lines) 1 [Item] Decide [What was decided] 2 [Item] Discuss [Where it landed] 3 [Item] Inform [The key fact] DECISIONS Decision Agreed by Effective from [Decision, in full] [Name] [Date] ACTIONS # Action (start with a verb) Owner Due 1 [Action] [Name] [Date] 2 [Action] [Name] [Date] NEXT MEETING: [Date and time]
What each part is for:
| Part | What it's for | Common slip |
|---|---|---|
| Attendees and apologies | Shows who heard the decisions and who needs telling | Leaving apologies out, so absent people are never briefed |
| Actions from last meeting | Closes the loop on last time before anything new | Not checking, so actions quietly disappear |
| Outcome | One or two lines on where each item landed | A paragraph on who said what |
| Decisions | The decision in full, so it can be read on its own later | "Agreed as discussed" |
| Actions | Who's doing what by when | "Team to look into it" |
| Next meeting | Saves a round of emails | Leaving it to be sorted later |
A filled-in meeting minutes example
This is a typical example, made up to show the shape. It's a 45-minute monthly operations meeting in a small services business.
| Meeting | Monthly operations meeting |
|---|---|
| Date and time | Thursday, 14:00 to 14:45, meeting room 2 and video link |
| Chair / minutes | Operations lead / office manager |
| Attendees | Operations lead, office manager, account lead, finance assistant |
| Apologies | Sales lead |
| Objective | Agree what happens with the office lease, and fix late timesheets |
| Action from last meeting | Owner | Done? | Decision |
|---|---|---|---|
| Get two quotes for new laptops | Office manager | Yes | Close |
| Update the client welcome pack | Account lead | No | Carry to 30th |
| # | Item | Type | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Office lease renewal | Decide | Renew for one year, not three. Ask the landlord for a break clause |
| 2 | Late timesheets | Discuss | Timesheets due by 10:00 Monday. Finance assistant sends one reminder on Friday |
| 3 | New laptop supplier | Inform | Second quote chosen on delivery date. Order placed |
| Decision | Agreed by | Effective from |
|---|---|---|
| Renew the office lease for one year, with a break clause if the landlord agrees | Operations lead | From the current lease end |
| Timesheets are due by 10:00 every Monday | Operations lead | Next Monday |
| # | Action | Owner | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Email the landlord asking for a one-year renewal with a break clause | Operations lead | Tuesday |
| 2 | Tell the sales lead about the lease decision and the timesheet deadline | Office manager | Friday |
| 3 | Set up the Friday timesheet reminder | Finance assistant | Friday |
| 4 | Finish the client welcome pack (carried) | Account lead | 30th |
That's the whole thing. Look back at the landlord question at the top: with this page, it takes ten seconds to answer.
Here's how it looks in a finished system. This is a page from the filled-in Meeting Agenda and Minutes in our Business Essentials pack, which opens every meeting with last time's actions and gives each decision a reference.
How to take meeting minutes
Good minutes are mostly decided before the meeting starts and in its last five minutes. Click through each stage.
Taking minutes, stage by stage
Pick a stage to see what to do.
What to do
- Copy the agenda into the minutes template, so the items are already in order
- Fill in the meeting details, attendees and last time's actions
- Agree who's taking the minutes. It shouldn't be the chair
- Have last meeting's minutes open
You’re done when: The top half is filled in and the agenda items are waiting for outcomes.
What to do
- For each item, write where it landed in one or two lines
- Write every decision in full, as a sentence someone could read on its own in six months
- Write every action as it's agreed: verb first, one owner, a date
- If an action has no owner or date, ask for one there and then
- Leave out who said what, unless it's a formal meeting that needs it
You’re done when: Every agenda item has an outcome, and every action has a name and a date.
What to do
- Read back each decision
- Read back each action: what, who and by when
- Fix anything people disagree with while they're still in the room
- Confirm the date of the next meeting
You’re done when: Everyone has heard the same decisions and actions.
What to do
- Tidy the wording, without changing what was agreed
- Send to attendees and to anyone who sent apologies
- Ask for corrections by a set time
- Move the actions into wherever your team tracks work
You’re done when: The minutes are sent within a working day, and the actions are where people will see them.
What to do
- Open with last meeting's actions: done, carried or dropped
- Record any carried action with a new date
- For formal minutes, ask the meeting to approve last time's minutes and have the chair sign them
You’re done when: Nothing agreed last time has disappeared.
Two habits make the biggest difference. Write the action at the moment it's agreed, while you can still ask "who?" and "by when?". And keep the read-back, even when the meeting's running late. It's the five minutes that stop three people leaving with three versions.
If you're writing minutes for a video call, share your screen or the document while you type. People correct things as they see them, and the remote attendees get the same record as everyone in the room.
Fix these minutes
Each line below is the kind of thing that ends up in real minutes. Rewrite it so someone who wasn't there would know what was decided or who's doing what, then compare it with ours. There's no score.
Fix these minutes
Rewrite each weak line, then show a stronger version.
“Discussed the office move. Agreed to look into it.”
Who's looking into what, and by when?
Stronger: Action: get two quotes for removal firms and send them to the operations lead. Owner: office manager. Due: Friday 14th.
"Look into it" has no owner, no date and no finish line. The stronger line says what done looks like.
“Pricing was agreed as discussed.”
Could someone who wasn't there say what the price is?
Stronger: Decision: the standard package goes up from 1 March for new clients only. Existing clients keep current prices until renewal. Agreed by the operations lead.
"As discussed" only works for people who were there, and only while they remember. A decision should make sense on its own.
“Team to follow up with the client.”
Which person, and what are they sending?
Stronger: Action: email the client the revised timeline and ask them to confirm by Wednesday. Owner: account lead. Due: Monday.
When the owner is "the team", everyone assumes someone else has it. One name, one date.
“Sam raised concerns about the deadline and there was a long discussion about resourcing, with various views.”
What did the meeting conclude?
Stronger: Outcome: the deadline stays. The design work moves to the freelancer for two weeks. Action: brief the freelancer. Owner: Sam. Due: Tuesday.
Minutes record where a discussion landed. If it didn't land anywhere, say so and add an action to decide it.
“Website: ongoing.”
What happens next, and when will you know?
Stronger: Outcome: the new site is waiting on final copy. Action: send the last three pages of copy to the designer. Owner: marketing lead. Due: 21st.
"Ongoing" can sit in the minutes for months. Give it a next step and a date.
These are typical examples we wrote. The stronger versions are suggestions; yours may be better.
An action items template you can reuse
Minutes record actions. An action log keeps them alive between meetings. If your actions keep slipping, keep one running list for each regular meeting and open every meeting with it.
ACTION LOG: [Meeting name] # Raised Action (start with a verb) Owner Due Status 1 [Date] [Send / Book / Decide / Draft...] [Name] [Date] Open 2 [Date] Done 3 [Date] Carried to [date] 4 [Date] Dropped: [reason]
Four rules keep it honest:
- One owner. One named person. Others can help, but one person reports back.
- Start with a verb. "Send", "book", "draft", "decide". Not "pricing" or "website".
- A real date. "ASAP" and "next week" aren't dates.
- Close, carry or drop. Every open action gets one of the three at the next meeting. Dropping one is fine, as long as it's on purpose and written down.
If actions still don't happen once they're written down, the minutes probably aren't the problem. Read why your team isn't following through for the usual causes.
Formal vs informal meeting minutes
How much detail you need depends on the meeting.
| Informal minutes | Formal minutes | |
|---|---|---|
| Used for | Team meetings, project meetings, one-to-ones, client calls | Board meetings, committees, trustees, members' or shareholders' meetings |
| What's recorded | Attendees, outcomes, decisions, actions | All of that, plus apologies, whether the meeting was quorate, declarations of interest and the exact wording of each resolution |
| Who said what | Usually left out | Sometimes needed, for example who proposed a resolution or who disagreed |
| Approval | Sent round for corrections | Approved at the next meeting and signed by the chair |
| How long they're kept | As long as the decisions matter | Often set by law. In the UK, minutes of directors' meetings must be kept for at least ten years |
The ten-year rule comes from section 248 of the Companies Act 2006, which also requires every UK company to record minutes of all its directors' meetings. Elsewhere the rules differ, and your articles, bylaws or constitution may add their own, so check them for anything formal.
For everything else, keep minutes as short as they can be while still making sense to someone who wasn't there.
What to do after the meeting
Sending the minutes isn't the end of the job. Four things make them useful:
- Send them within a working day, to attendees and to anyone who sent apologies. The longer you leave it, the more people rely on their own memory instead.
- Move the actions to where work happens. If your team works from a task tool, a shared list or a weekly sheet, copy the actions there with their owners and dates.
- Keep decisions where they can be found. Minutes get filed by date, so a decision from March is hard to find in September. A simple decision log, with what was decided, by whom, why and when to revisit it, saves the same argument happening twice.
- Open the next meeting with the actions. That's the habit that makes people take them seriously.
Those four habits are what make a meeting worth its cost, and the free meeting cost calculator shows what that cost is.
All of this fits inside a weekly operating rhythm: the meeting sets the actions, and the week is when they get done. For the other formats a small team needs, see the best meeting templates for small teams.
SystemaFlow™ systems are done-for-you templates in Word and PDF, not software, so they work with whatever your team already uses for notes and tasks. The free pack doesn't include a minutes template, but it does give each action an owner and a week to get done in.
Want the full version?
The Meeting Agenda and Minutes system in the Business Essentials pack keeps the agenda, minutes, decisions and last time's actions on one sheet, with a filled-in example and a guide. It's in the Business Foundations Vault, with the Decision Log for keeping every decision that matters in one place.
See what's in the Business Foundations Vault →Or get all 352 systems, and every one we add later, with Masterworks: $999, paid once.
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Frequently asked questions
- What should meeting minutes include?
- The meeting's name, date and time, who attended and who sent apologies, who chaired and who took the notes, a one-line outcome for each agenda item, every decision in full, and each action with one owner and a due date. Formal minutes also record declarations of interest and are approved at the next meeting.
- How do you take meeting minutes?
- Use a template that follows the agenda, and write outcomes rather than a running account. For each item, note what was decided or agreed, then any action with an owner and a date. Read the actions and decisions back before people leave, and send the minutes within a working day.
- Who should take the minutes?
- Someone other than the chair, so the person running the meeting can concentrate on running it. In a small team it's fine to rotate the job. For a board meeting, the company secretary or another named person usually does it.
- What is the difference between meeting minutes and meeting notes?
- Minutes are the agreed record of a meeting: decisions, actions and who was there, written to be shared and kept. Notes are anything someone jots down for their own use. Informal minutes can be short, but they should still be the version everyone works from.
- Do meeting minutes need to be approved?
- Formal minutes, such as for a board, committee or trustees, are normally approved at the next meeting and signed by the chair. For a team meeting, send them round and ask for corrections by a set time. If nobody objects, they stand.
- How long should you keep meeting minutes?
- It depends on the meeting and where you are. In the UK, minutes of company directors' meetings must be kept for at least ten years. For team meetings, keep them for as long as the decisions in them matter, in one place people can search.
Where to go from here
Meeting agenda template, with examples →PeopleNobodyfollowsthroughWhy your team isn't following through →Meetings and rhythmMeetingsthatdecideBest meeting templates for small teams →Meetings and rhythmDriftingweekto weekHow to set up a weekly operating rhythm →