Vital Corporate Meeting Minutes Requirements To Maintain Compliance

If you are the proud new owner of a corporation, there are some operational responsibilities that you may not be aware of, but that are nevertheless required by state and federal regulations. Recording meeting minutes is one of those tasks. Learn these important corporate meeting minutes requirements to maintain compliance at your organization.

Meeting Info

Of course, your secretary, note taker or whoever is responsible for recording meeting minutes is going to be expected to record the date and location of each and every meeting. This is the general content that is required for every single meeting you hold. In this section, you may even want to include further details about the time duration of the meeting. This is one of the simplest corporate meeting minutes requirements you will need to complete in order to maintain compliance.

Attendees

You will also need to take note of who attended the meeting. This information should not only include those present at the meeting. It should also include who was absent from the meeting. You do not need to include information about why absentees were not present. However, you do need to note that they were not there for the meeting. This is especially important for meetings where you take votes. Secretaries should also annotate attendance with information about late arrivals or early departures when they occur. This is required for compliance in almost every state.

In Writing

Meeting minutes are required to be taken in writing. Many business owners are surprised to hear this. Almost everything is digital nowadays, even at your local medical office. However, this is not the case for corporate meeting minutes. In order to maintain compliance with corporation meeting minutes regulations, be sure you record meeting minutes by hand.

Agenda Items

The bulk of your meeting minutes should consist of the line items on your agenda. What do you plan on discussing in this meeting? What do you actually get around to discussing within the meeting? Make sure you include a brief description of each agenda item. But, you do not need to record every little bit of discussion about the topic. Only include parts when someone requests they be included within the minutes. If you are talking about implementing new password policies, for example, you can briefly explain how you decide to implement them, but not what the actual password policy will be. This will help you to maintain compliance without giving away all your business secrets on the record.

Votes

Your notetaker will also need to record the results of any and all votes that occur within the meeting. This is true regardless of whether you are voting on going public or simply on which refrigerator repair service to hire. Each individual vote needs to be recorded by name. Then, you must also indicate the total votes for each side of the argument. This is one of the most important corporate meeting minutes requirements that you will be responsible for in order to satisfy regulatory measures. Do not forget it.

If you are a new business owner who operates as a C corporation or an S corporation, you will need to take minutes at every board meeting you have. This is a requirement for almost every state within the United States. Make sure you maintain compliance by meeting the corporate meeting minutes requirements above. That way, your business will always be protected from any potential mishaps.

Photo from https://www.iwcollege.ac.uk/information/corporate-governance/meeting-minutes/