How to write meeting minutes: what to include and a template

Plenty of meetings end with the feeling that everything is clear. A week later, nobody remembers the same thing. One person thinks the budget was approved, another thinks it was pushed to the next meeting, and the task that seemed urgent has no owner. Minutes exist to prevent that: so there’s a single version of what happened and what comes next.

What minutes are for

Minutes aren’t a transcript or a diary of the meeting. They’re a short document that records what changes something: what was decided, what needs doing and who’s responsible. They help the people who were there to remember and check, and the people who couldn’t make it to catch up without asking around. Some bodies, such as a company board or a residents’ association, have formal requirements of their own. This guide focuses on everyday working meetings: teams, projects, clients and internal committees.

What minutes must include

• The basics: title, date, start and finish times, and the room or video call link.
• Attendees: who was there, who sent apologies and who’s taking the minutes. For external guests, their company too.
• Agenda: the items you planned to cover, in the same order. That way you can see if any were left out.
• A summary of each item: two or three sentences on the essentials, without replaying the conversation.
• Decisions: each one in a clear, closed sentence (“Approved…”, “Ruled out…”, “Postponed until…”).
• Actions: what needs doing, one person responsible and a specific date.
• Next meeting: date, time and, if known, the topics still open.

A template you can copy

This structure works for almost any working meeting. Copy the headings into a document and fill in only what you need.

1. Meeting: title, date, time and room or link.
2. Attendees: name and role or company. Apologies: names.
3. Agenda: a numbered list of items.
4. Summary: two or three sentences for each item.
5. Decisions: one per line, with the agenda item it belongs to.
6. Actions: task, owner and date, one per line.
7. Next meeting: date, time and open topics.

If the meeting is short, the summary can be one line per item. What you shouldn’t cut are the decisions and actions: that’s the part someone will look up in a month’s time, when there’s doubt about what was agreed.

How to take them without missing the meeting

• Prepare the template beforehand, with the agenda already in. During the meeting you just fill in the gaps.
• Note decisions and actions as they happen, even in shorthand. You can finish the summary later; a date nobody wrote down is gone.
• Say it out loud as you close each item: “So, Marta sends it on Thursday.” If nobody corrects you, it goes in the minutes.
• Send them the same day. The later they arrive, the less they’re read and the harder they are to correct.

Common mistakes

• Writing everything down. Nobody reads four pages of minutes. If someone needs the detail, give them the recording or the transcript.
• Actions without an owner. “The contract needs reviewing” isn’t an action: it’s missing a who. And “the team” isn’t a person.
• Vague dates. “Soon” or “when we can” lead nowhere. Put a specific day.
• Mixing proposals with decisions. Someone suggesting something doesn’t mean it was approved. If there was no agreement, say so.
• Sending them and forgetting them. Minutes only work if the next meeting starts by going through the previous actions.

How Echo drafts them

Taking notes and taking part at the same time is hard. That’s why many people record the meeting and write the minutes afterwards, listening to it again. Echo does that part for you: it transcribes the meeting, separates the speakers and, when it ends, leaves you a draft of the minutes to review in a few minutes.

• Summary, decisions, actions and chapters for every meeting, in the Summary tab. Each chapter has its timestamp so you can listen to that moment again.
• Actions with an owner and a date. If someone said “on Friday”, Echo turns it into a real date, and the actions move to a shared board by themselves.
• A follow-up email for guests with the decisions and next steps. By default you review and send it; if you like, it goes out by itself after the meetings the assistant records.
• Analysis types for meetings, interviews, classes, sales calls or medical consultations, plus the option to create your own with the headings from your template.
• My notes: if you’d rather write your own, jot down your points and “Complete with AI” fills them in with what was said and the minute.

You can bring almost any meeting to Echo. The assistant joins Microsoft Teams meetings; Meet or Zoom meetings in the browser are recorded with the Chrome extension, and anything you’ve already recorded can be uploaded as a file. Transcription and AI run on Edorteam’s own servers in the European Union and are never trained on your meetings.

The draft doesn’t replace your review. Read the decisions, fix a name if needed and click “Regenerate” if you change anything in the text. There’s more detail in Minutes and tasks, and you can try it on the Free plan: see pricing.