Meeting Minutes Template
Good meeting minutes record what the meeting decided and who does what by when, not who said what. So that's all this template asks for: who came, each agenda item's outcome and decisions, and action items with an owner and a date. There's no box for the discussion. Fill it in below, then download it as a Word file or copy it as text.
By Eman Khoubian, Founder & CEO
Your minutes
Weekly product sync
- Date
- Tuesday, November 3, 2026
- Time
- 10:00 to 10:40
- Place
- Zoom
- Led by
- Ana Ruiz
- Minutes by
- Priya Shah
- Present
- Ana Ruiz, Ben Okafor, Priya Shah, Tom Lee
- Absent
- Grace Kim
1. Launch date for the new pricing page
Legal hasn't seen the new plan names yet.
Decision: Launch on November 18, not November 11.
2. Support backlog
Backlog is down to 42 open tickets. No change to who covers support.
| Task | Owner | Due |
|---|---|---|
| Send the new plan names to legal | Ben Okafor | Nov 5 |
| Move the launch date in the project plan | Priya Shah | Nov 4 |
| Draft the launch email | Owner to confirm | Date to confirm |
Next meeting: Tuesday, November 10, 10:00, Zoom
Nothing you type is sent anywhere.
What goes in meeting minutes
Robert's Rules of Order puts it in one line: “Minutes are a record of what was done at a meeting, not a record of what was said.” Write these parts, in this order:
- Meeting details: the name, date, time, place or link, who chaired and who took the minutes.
- Attendance: who was there and who wasn't.
- Each agenda item: the topic, one line on the outcome, and any decision.
- Action items: the task, one owner and a due date.
- Next meeting: when and where.
Leave out the debate and anything said off the agenda. If someone needs the full conversation, that's what a recording is for.
For a formal vote, the decision line holds the motion, who made it and the result: “Motion by Ana Ruiz to approve the budget. Adopted.” If the votes were counted, add the count.
From discussion to minutes
Here's a short piece of the weekly product sync from the example above, as people said it and as it reads in the minutes:
Four lines of discussion, four lines of minutes
What was said
- Ben: “Legal hasn't seen the new plan names. I don't want to launch on the 11th and rename things a week later.”
- Tom: “Marketing can hold the email a week. The 18th works. Someone has to write the launch email, though.”
- Ana: “OK, the 18th. Ben, can you get the names to legal by Thursday? Priya, can you move the date in the plan?”
- Priya: “I'll do it tomorrow.”
What the minutes say
- Decision: Launch on November 18, not November 11.
- Action: Send the new plan names to legal. Ben Okafor, Nov 5.
- Action: Move the launch date in the project plan. Priya Shah, Nov 4.
- Action: Draft the launch email. Owner to confirm.
The hard part is the action items. Put a name and a date on one only when someone actually said the name and the date. Ana asked Ben for Thursday, so his line says Nov 5. Priya said tomorrow, so hers says Nov 4. Tom said someone has to write the launch email, but nobody took it, so the minutes say “Owner to confirm”. Ask who's taking it before you send the minutes out. An action item nobody owns is a wish.
Approving and fixing minutes
If your board or committee approves minutes, send the draft while people still remember the meeting. We'd say within a day. At the next meeting, members can correct the draft before approving it. Under Robert's Rules, a correction made then goes straight into the text, and that meeting's minutes say only that the last ones were approved “as corrected”, not what changed.
Let WhisperAI draft them
It's hard to follow a meeting and take minutes at the same time. WhisperAI records the meeting in Chrome or Edge without a bot joining the call. On Business Pro ($24.99 a month) and Enterprise, it then writes a recap: a short overview, the decisions (or the main conclusions, when nothing was decided) and the action items.
It names an owner only when someone said who, and it gives a due date the way it was said, like “by Friday”. Turn that into a calendar date, then export the recap as a Word file, a PDF or text, or paste its parts into this template.