In this material, we want to pay attention to one of the types of mandatory documentation that must be regularly maintained in the board meetings – the meeting minutes. How to organize a well-structured minute with the help of board meeting software?
The essence of the board meeting minutes
Permanent or temporary collegiate bodies (board directors) should resolve specific enterprise issues. Resolutions, decisions, and orders document their work. Resolutions and decisions are adopted due to discussing specific tasks and problems at the board meetings. The course of the board meetings is recorded in the minutes, which are drawn up following particular rules.
So, the board minute is a document that records the sequence and content of the issues discussed by the collegial body and the decisions taken. In necessary cases, drawing up extracts from the protocol is practised. Drawing up and certifying extracts is similar to drawing up sections from an order for the main activity.
From the point of view of the completeness of the reflection of the course of the meeting, detailed and short minutes are distinguished. The detailed protocol contains a record of all speeches at the meeting, a short one – only the names of those who spoke and the topic of the speech. Detailed protocols contain not only the essence but also the nature of the discussion. Which protocol should be kept in each particular case is established in the regulations of the collegial body or decided by the chairman of the collegiate body.
Basic board meeting minutes’ legal requirements to know
There are no rules for drawing up minutes in the law, but there are recommendations on what details every board member needs to specify. So, there is a short guide about board meeting minutes requirements:
- full name of the company;
- names and positions of the participants in the discussion;
- the name of the document, for example, “minutes of the meeting”;
- the date of the discussion;
- protocol number;
- the city in which the protocol was drawn up;
- signatures of the chairman and secretary.
In addition to the required details, there are recommendations for the protocol’s design. The document should consist of two parts: introductory and main. In the essential part, the names of the participants and the agenda are indicated – a list of issues that are considered at the meeting. If there are more than 15 people at the meeting, the number of participants is shown in the introductory part, and a complete list with names is pinned to the protocol. In the central part, the course of the discussion is recorded. In the detailed protocol, everything that happened is documented in detail, in the short one – only the issues of the meeting and the decisions taken on them.
The chairman and the secretary sign the minutes of the board meeting. The minutes of the board of directors must be signed by all those present at the meeting. In critical cases, speakers must endorse the minutes (visas are affixed to the document’s left margin). The document should be dated by the date when the described event occurred. If it lasted intermittently for several days, then a dash indicates its beginning and end dates. The decisions taken are communicated to the employees of the enterprise in the form of a copy of the protocol or the form of an extract containing the section “RESOLVED” (“DECIDED”).