Meeting minutes are an essential element of all the meetings in the business culture. When board members discuss serious and important tasks, they often need someone to take notes during the session. Sometimes it will be a secretary, and periodically one of the board members will summarize it after everyone says their mind. And sometimes it can be, well, anyone of us.

Such a document, called meeting minutes, can be drafted in many different ways. You can create some loose thoughts on a page without any organization; you can simply create a Microsoft Word document, put a table there, and just insert everything people were discussing. You can also use a professionally designed document to organize all the meeting details so that all the stakeholders can be on the same page.

To create a perfect tool for any note-taker, we’ve provided some free meeting minutes templates for you to use so that you can be organized and optimized. So, without further ado, let’s get started with some details!

But – before that, let’s discuss the recommended software for this specific task. Of course, many products can be used for this particular purpose, but we can only recommend Microsoft Office Products for such an important task. It is the single most famous piece of software on the planet, and it’s also available for a great price at RoyalCDKeys.

Millions of people use it in their everyday work and for a reason. It’s reliable, fast, and well-known, and you don’t need to export it to any other file type just to send it out. If you want something that will not only let you do, what you need to do but actively help you in this task, you should invest your time and money into this product.

And, thanks to the hard work of competition and resellers such as ourselves, you can honestly get this software at a relatively small price. It’s not like in the old days when you just had to put out dozens of hundreds of dollars to provide your employees with a new Office. Nowadays – you can get this going with some reasonable prices.

And with that in mind, let’s get into some Microsoft Office templates we’ve prepared for you this time. Enjoy!

Meeting Minutes Template #1

This meeting minutes template is perfect for videoconferences. Everything you need is divided into categories you can fill out in a preferred way with no issues whatsoever. It is excellent for most uses, but we would like to emphasize that online calls are something that this particular template excels at.

If you need to get all the discussion points and call to order in line, this template is definitely something to look out for. You can download this template for free at eForms.com.

Meeting Minutes Template #2

Next thing on our list is something for those who need a little more than just your everyday roll coll. Here, you have a much bigger template with a lot of brackets that you can fill out and get approval of.

When it comes to meeting your “meeting minutes” requirements, you will surely find everything you need with this one. Of course, it may feel a bit overwhelming at times, but it is one of the most advanced templates on our list. It is definitely worth recommending. You can download this template for free at the official Microsoft website.

Meeting Minutes Template #3

The last template on our list is great when you need to gather a lot of information at once. Whether it’s a meeting, mailing, or whatever, this template will quickly guide you through all the issues you may have and assists you with some feature you were not aware of.

It may not be the best when you want just to get a few notes and flee, though, as it is a little bit complicated for that kind of task. You can download this template for free at the official Microsoft website.

So, now that we know what kind of software to use and we’ve seen some of the most interesting templates to use, let's address the topic at hand – meeting minutes.

Meeting minutes is a pretty basic concept, and if we were to summarize it with one sentence, it would be – taking notes. Basically, everything you do during the meeting is taking notes and presenting them to the board.

You can do it organically by just putting stuff down in the Word document, or you can choose the more advanced option and create meeting minutes more professionally. The phrase “meeting minutes” does not come from, well, minutes, but from the “minute” notes.

There are many ways that you can utilize meeting minutes. Of course, you need to create a meeting minutes document after every single meeting so that everyone is up to know when it comes to the agenda. Also – it is often used as an agenda description.

But what are meeting minutes usually used for? Well, there are a couple of things to consider. First of all, whether it’s a normal or special meeting, this kind of document can provide you with a better understanding of what steps you are planning ahead.

Additionally, you can use meeting minutes to keep track of all the action items you have to take on.

Finally, you can utilize meeting minutes as a kind of archive, where you store all the information on the company in a compiled file.

Whether you want to create documentation, keep track of action items, or whatever else, meeting minutes can help you with all these tasks and even more.

The importance of taking notes during a meeting is something that everyone should take into consideration. A to-do list, noting important elements of a meeting, or just sheer documentation purposes all come down to the assigned tasks and how we will be taking them on.

It helps to keep track of everything and progress as a group and as a whole company. In the case of typical meeting minutes, having this kind of document will surely make the process run smoother.

On the other hand, documentation can surely be useful when discussing some kind of legal troubles or issues that need to be addressed within the group.

There are a couple of different types of meeting minutes. Without going into too much detail, we can highlight two major types of meeting minutes.

The first one is called no-agenda meeting minutes. The second one – is formatting. The main difference between these two is simply that no-agenda meeting minutes are just free-flowing notes, and the formatting meeting minutes example is structured.

Formatting Meeting Minutes

Formatting means something structured with an agenda and a clear understanding of what it tries to accomplish.

In this case, you will have everything formalized and structured, and preparing effective meeting minutes will take some time beforehand.

Of course, it takes a little more time to create such a document, but in the end – it pays off, as you can get to the information you are looking for and get all the details straight ahead rather than checking out through some loosely put-together notes.

No-Agenda Meeting Minutes

On the other hand, we have the no-agenda meeting minutes. In this case, you need to consider some of the following issues carefully. First, it will be a mess, or – you will need to edit it afterwards. Unfortunately, you cannot create your no-agenda meeting minutes formally, as it seems to be almost impossible for most humans.

But, there are some advantages to this concept. For example – you need zero preparation time in order to create such a document. And that’s pretty much it.

No-Agenda vs. Formatting

Well, in this case, we can surely say that formatting is better on every single point. It is not only the more understandable way of keeping notes, but it can benefit you and your company in many ways in the future. Keeping loose notes is better than nothing, but avoiding it altogether does not seem like an option we would recommend at all.

So, if you want to do it correctly, you should take one of the templates we provided. Creating this kind of document can be arduous, but if you do it right, you will definitely benefit in the long run. You can write a meeting minutes sample in a matter of seconds, and it will still be better than going through some non-comprehensible notes.

Let’s now go over some of the stages that you will go through when preparing the meeting minutes document, and we will explain some of the more essential elements in the later part of the article. First of all, you need to start a process called pre-planning. Then, it’s taking notes during the meeting part. After that, writing/transcribing from audio or video recording. Finally – distributing the notes between the stakeholders and filing them into the right places for documentation reasons.

Pre-Planning

As most of those elements seem to be rather self-explanatory, let’s go over something that may be interpreted in many different ways: pre-planning. It is the single most important element of meeting minutes in a formatting way, as it will make the whole process easier and more accessible in the future.

What you need to do is create a specific spreadsheet for the kind of meeting you are going to have and modify it accordingly to the circumstances. You can also use one of the templates we’ve provided before.

That way, you can instantly put all the relevant information into the right brackets. Remember to fill out your meeting minutes brackets beforehand, wherever possible. That will save you time during the meeting.

Minute Meeting Agenda

It is also useful to take the agenda of a meeting into account when creating a minute meeting document. That will help you understand what information will be necessary for this meeting and how to modify your spreadsheet accordingly.

In the agenda, you will find the names of all the stakeholders involved in the meeting and all the documents sent out.

Additionally, if you have any questions, be sure to contact the meeting organizers for additional information; they will be more than happy to assist you in any way you need. Remember that creating a great meeting minutes document is in everyone's interest, so it is everyone’s job to help you out in creating one.

So, let’s review some things to include in a meeting minutes document. Of course, this is not a list that you NEED to put into the document, but more of a suggestion format of things that could be included. If you are creating your document, make some adjustments to make it clearer for the particular meeting.

Date and Time

This seems to be pretty self-explanatory. You need to create a date and time bracket to let people know when it happened.

Attendees

One of the most important elements. Attendee is a bracket you just need to include to create a perfect meeting minutes document. Be sure to include those who showed up and those who couldn’t make it. It is very important to make it so that there will be no issues like someone didn’t know something or it wasn’t explained.

Previous Meeting Minutes

It is also good to include the previous meeting minutes section to explain what you accomplished and what is yet to be done. What is the progress of some of the tasks you took upon yourself? How will they be resolved? All those things are of utmost importance for sure.

Agenda Items

It’s important to include all the agenda items in the meeting minutes template as you will be looking for this information later, and it’s great to have it easily accessible. Those would be things like – actions taken, next steps, voting, motions, items, new business, next meetings, etc. Be sure to be thorough with these, as they can be some of the most important elements to remember when searching for future information.

And if that’s not enough, here are some tips to take into consideration when creating a meeting minutes document.

• Create the minutes during/right after the meeting, as they may fade into nothingness later.

• Record your meetings with a recording device, as it may be useful when trying to transcribe/create meeting minutes.

• Not everything is important, so it is not worth note-taking if someone is making a joke or just speaking about some personal stuff.

• Write everything in the same tense, as you will not be able to comprehend what is going on otherwise.

• Try to be as objective as possible – don’t overdo it, don’t try to overexplain anything, don’t add personal stories – try to create a perfectly objective scenario of the meeting for others to consider.

Thank you for checking our meeting minutes material. We’ve tried to make it as accessible as possible, so let us know if we succeeded. Meeting minutes can be a lot of trouble to start, but if you do, you will benefit greatly from implementing them in your company. Of course, there can be some issues with it, such as time consumption, but we are positive you can get around that and make the best meeting minutes possible.

In the end, it is not that hard. Whether you choose a formal version or make some loose notes during and after the meeting, you will quickly find that with the right approach, it is a feasible task that pretty much anyone can do. Of course, it should not be undermined, but you can explain it to the employee at the entry-level easily and without any potential issues.

Anyways, thanks so much for sticking with us during this article. We have many of those in our library, so if you are interested, feel free to browse them. And – if you have any questions or suggestions for the next meeting/article, let us know! We would be more than happy to create an article to suit your needs.

Thanks for stopping by, and we’ll see you at the next one! Take care!