How to write meeting minutes, with a template and an example.
What to record, what to leave out, a template you can copy, and a filled-in example. Plus where AI helps and where you still need to check its work.
- Short answer
- Meeting minutes are the written record of what a meeting decided and who will do what next. Good minutes are short: the date and attendees, each decision, each action with an owner and a due date, and anything left open. They are a record of outcomes, not a transcript.
What meeting minutes are for
Minutes exist so that people who were in the meeting agree on what happened, and people who were not can find out in two minutes. They answer three questions: what did we decide, who is doing what by when, and what is still unresolved.
They are different from meeting notes, which are whatever you jot down for yourself, and from a transcript, which records every word. Minutes are the official short version. For a board or committee they may also be a legal record, in which case your organization’s rules decide the format.
What to include in meeting minutes
- The meeting name, date, time, and place or call link.
- Who attended, who sent apologies, and who took the minutes.
- Each agenda item, with the outcome in a sentence or two.
- Every decision, worded so that someone outside the room would understand it.
- Every action item, with one named owner and a due date.
- Open questions and anything deferred to a later meeting.
- The date of the next meeting, if there is one.
Leave out who said what in a discussion, unless the rules of the meeting require it. Leave out opinions, side conversations, and your own commentary. If a point did not lead to a decision, an action, or an open question, it probably does not belong.
How to write meeting minutes, step by step
- Before the meeting, copy the agenda into your template. Each agenda item becomes a heading with space for the outcome.
- During the meeting, write outcomes, not dialogue. When the group decides something, write it down in the words they used and read it back if it is unclear.
- For each action, get a name and a date before the conversation moves on. “Someone should look into it” is not an action item.
- Mark anything unresolved as open, with who will bring it back.
- Write up the minutes the same day, while you can still fill the gaps from memory.
- Send them to attendees within a day and ask for corrections by a set date. After that, the minutes stand.
A meeting minutes template
Copy this into a document and adjust the headings to your agenda. It suits team meetings, project reviews, and client calls.
[Meeting name] Date: [date] Time: [start–end] Place: [room or call link] Present: [names] Apologies: [names] Minutes taken by: [name] 1. [Agenda item] Outcome: [what was decided or concluded] 2. [Agenda item] Outcome: [what was decided or concluded] Decisions - [decision] Action items - [action] | Owner: [name] | Due: [date] Open questions - [question] | Returning: [meeting or date] Next meeting: [date and time]
A filled-in example
The same template after a weekly project review. The project and people are fictional.
Atlas weekly review Date: 12 May Time: 10:00–10:40 Place: video call Present: Maya, Sam, Elena Apologies: Priya Minutes taken by: Sam 1. Rollout readiness Outcome: Rollout is held until both blocker owners confirm. 2. Onboarding feedback Outcome: Onboarding friction is still the main launch risk. Decisions - Hold the rollout until both blocker owners confirm. - Move weekly check-ins to Thursdays. Action items - Confirm both blocker owners | Owner: Maya | Due: 14 May - Share the revised onboarding checklist | Owner: Elena | Due: 18 May Open questions - Migration date | Returning: next weekly review Next meeting: 19 May, 10:00
Common mistakes
- Writing a transcript. Nobody reads four pages; they read the decisions and their own name.
- Actions without owners. An action assigned to “the team” belongs to nobody.
- Vague decisions. “Discussed pricing” records nothing. “Keep the current price until the June review” does.
- Sending them late. Minutes sent a week later get corrected from memory, which is how disputes start.
- Adding conclusions the meeting did not reach. If it was not decided, record it as open.
Using AI to write meeting minutes
An AI meeting assistant can record the meeting, transcribe it, and draft the minutes: decisions, action items, owners, and open questions. That removes the hardest part of the job, which is listening and writing at the same time.
It does not remove the checking. AI drafts go wrong in predictable places: names and numbers, an owner assigned to an action nobody actually took, and a suggestion written up as a decision. Read the draft against the transcript before you send it, and tell people at the start that the meeting is being recorded. Our guide to what an AI meeting assistant is covers how these tools work and where they fail.
We make steer, which does this. It captures the meeting from your computer without a bot joining, then keeps the summary, transcript, and action items together, so you can ask it to turn the record into minutes in the format above. See AI meeting notes for how that works.