TemplatesMeeting Minutes & Decisions Log Template
The Ops Manual · Updated 2026-07-18
Minutes exist to answer two questions months later: what did we decide, and who was doing what by when? Anything that doesn't serve those questions is transcription theatre. This template keeps the record to one page, and pairs it with the document most businesses are missing: a running decisions log.
In practice: write minutes during the meeting, not after — the last two minutes of the meeting are for reading the decisions and actions aloud. Disagreement about what was decided is free at that moment and expensive a month later.
Meeting minutes — [Meeting name]
| Field | Value |
|---|
| Date / time | [Date, start–finish] |
| Attendees | [Names] |
| Apologies | [Names] |
| Minutes by | [Name] |
1. Decisions made
| # | Decision | Context (one line) |
|---|
| D1 | [What was decided, stated so it can't be misread] | [Why / what it replaces] |
| D2 | […] | […] |
2. Actions
| # | Action | Owner | Due |
|---|
| A1 | [Verb-first action, specific enough to be checked] | [One name — never a team] | [Date] |
| A2 | […] | […] | […] |
3. Noted
- [Things worth remembering that are neither decisions nor actions — risks raised, numbers reported, items parked for next time]
4. Carried over
- [Actions from last meeting not yet closed — carried with owner and new date, or explicitly dropped]
The running decisions log
Minutes get filed by date; decisions get lost inside them. Keep one extra document per business — a single table where every decision from every meeting lands, newest on top. It becomes the institutional memory that survives staff changes.
| Date | Decision | Made by / meeting | Status |
|---|
| [Date] | [Decision, copied from minutes D#] | [Meeting name] | Active / Superseded by [entry] |
Common failure: recording actions with no owner or a team as owner. "Marketing to fix the website" is a wish. One name, one date — or it isn't an action, it's a hope.
Storage and follow-through
- Save minutes to the meeting's single folder, named consistently: Minutes-[meeting]-[YYYY-MM-DD].
- Copy decisions into the running decisions log the same day.
- Open the next meeting by reading the open actions — nothing else on the agenda until each is done, rescheduled or consciously dropped.
For committees or entities with formal obligations (incorporated associations, companies, safety committees), minimum record-keeping requirements exist — check ASIC, your state regulator or business.gov.au for what must be kept and for how long, and treat this template as the working layer on top of those obligations, not a replacement for them.