Free template
Meeting minutes template
Three templates you can copy and use in the next ten seconds — a general one, a short one for a standup, and a formal one for a board or a committee. No sign-up, no download, no email address.
They are written in Markdown, so they paste into a document, Notion, Slack or an email and stay readable in all of them. There is a filled-in example further down if you would rather see one finished than fill one in.
The standard meeting minutes template
For most meetings: a project review, a client call, a team meeting, a one-to-one worth recording. Conclusions first, so somebody who missed it reads the summary and the decisions and stops there.
# Meeting minutes — [what the meeting was called]
- **Date:** [YYYY-MM-DD]
- **Time:** [start–end, with the timezone if anyone was remote]
- **Participants:** [everyone who was there, separated by commas]
- **Apologies:** [anyone expected who could not make it]
- **Minutes taken by:** [your name]
## Summary
[Three or four sentences. What the meeting was for, and where it got to.
Write it for the person who was not there and will not read the rest.]
## Key topics
- [Topic discussed]
- [Topic discussed]
- [Topic discussed]
## Decisions
- **[The decision, written as something that is now true]**
[One line of context: why, and what it replaces.]
- **[The decision, written as something that is now true]**
## Action items
- [ ] **[What has to happen]** — Owner: [name] · Due [YYYY-MM-DD] · To do
- [ ] **[What has to happen]** — Owner: [name] · No due date · To do
- [ ] **[What has to happen]** — Unassigned · Due [YYYY-MM-DD] · To do
## Notes
[Anything worth keeping that is not a decision and not an action item:
numbers quoted, links, an objection somebody wanted on the record.]
## Next meeting
[Date, time, and what it is for. Leave it out if nothing was agreed.]
The short version, for a standup or a quick call
The standard template is too heavy for a fifteen-minute meeting, and a template nobody fills in is worse than no template. Three headings and nothing else.
# [Meeting] — [YYYY-MM-DD]
**Present:** [names] · **Minutes by:** [your name]
## Summary
[Two sentences. What this was about and what came out of it.]
## Decisions
- **[What is now true]**
## Action items
- [ ] **[What has to happen]** — Owner: [name] · Due [YYYY-MM-DD]
- [ ] **[What has to happen]** — Unassigned · No due date
Formal minutes, for a board or a committee
For minutes that may be approved at the next meeting, quoted, or read by somebody with standing to ask. It records what the others do not: who was present, whether the meeting was quorate, whether the previous minutes were approved, and how each motion was voted on.
# Minutes of the [name] meeting
**Organisation:** [name]
**Date:** [YYYY-MM-DD] **Time:** [start–end] **Location:** [place, or the call]
**Chair:** [name] **Minutes taken by:** [name]
## Present
- [Name], [role]
- [Name], [role]
**Apologies:** [names]
**Quorum:** [met / not met — say which, and how many were required]
## Minutes of the previous meeting
[Approved as circulated / approved with the amendments below / deferred.]
[Any amendment, stated exactly.]
## Matters arising
- [Item carried over from last time, and where it now stands]
## Summary
[What this meeting was for, and what it settled.]
## Key topics
- [Item on the agenda, and the substance of the discussion]
- [Item on the agenda, and the substance of the discussion]
## Decisions
- **[Motion or resolution, written as something that is now true]**
Proposed by [name], seconded by [name].
Carried / not carried — [for] for, [against] against, [n] abstentions.
## Action items
- [ ] **[What has to happen]** — Owner: [name] · Due [YYYY-MM-DD] · To do
## Any other business
- [Item raised, and what was done with it]
## Next meeting
[Date, time, place.]
---
Minutes prepared by [name] on [YYYY-MM-DD]. To be approved at the next meeting.
A filled-in example
The standard template with something in it. Every name, number and date below is invented for illustration. It is worth reading for the two awkward cases: an action item nobody owned, and one where the meeting said “before next week” rather than a date.
# Meeting minutes — Support handover, week 34
- **Date:** 2026-08-17
- **Time:** 14:00–14:35 (UTC+8)
- **Participants:** A. Rahman, J. Okonkwo, M. Silva
- **Apologies:** T. Nguyen
- **Minutes taken by:** M. Silva
## Summary
Weekly handover of open support tickets. Two long-running billing tickets were
closed after the refund policy was clarified. The queue is at 14 open tickets,
down from 21 last week. One recurring crash report needs an owner from
engineering, which nobody in the room could assign.
## Key topics
- The two billing tickets and what the refund policy actually says
- Response times over the last seven days
- A crash report from three separate customers on the same screen
## Decisions
- **Refund requests inside 14 days are approved by whoever picks up the ticket**
Previously every one waited for a second approver, which was the reason both
tickets stayed open for eleven days.
- **The queue is reviewed on Mondays rather than Fridays**
## Action items
- [ ] **Write the refund wording into the support handbook** — Owner: J. Okonkwo · Due 2026-08-21 · To do
- [ ] **Reproduce the crash on a test device and file it** — Unassigned · No due date · To do
Three customers reported it on the same screen. Nobody in the meeting owns
the area, so this is left unassigned rather than given to whoever was nearest.
- [ ] **Ask T. Nguyen whether the Monday review clashes with the standup** — Owner: A. Rahman · No due date · To do
The meeting said "before next week" rather than a date, so the due date is
left empty.
## Notes
Open tickets: 14, down from 21. Median first response: 3h 20m.
## Next meeting
2026-08-24, 14:00, same call. Same agenda.
What goes in each section
One sentence each, because the template is the point and you have already got it. How to write meeting minutes is the longer answer: the seven steps, what to leave out, and the same conversation minuted badly and well.
- The header
- Date, time, who was there and who took the minutes. It is the part people search on months later, and the part most often left out.
- Summary
- Three or four sentences for somebody who was not there. If it only makes sense to people who were, it is notes rather than minutes.
- Key topics
- What was discussed, as a list. It is the index — enough to tell a reader whether the thing they care about came up.
- Decisions
- Things that are true now that the meeting has ended. Write each one as a statement, not as a discussion, and keep them apart from the actions.
- Action items
- Work that still has to happen, one line each, with an owner and a date where the meeting actually named one — and the words Unassigned and No due date where it did not.
- Notes and next meeting
- Numbers quoted, links, an objection somebody wanted on the record, and the date of the next one. Leave either out rather than padding it.
The one rule worth taking from this page: never invent an owner or a due date. If the meeting did not name a person, the item is unassigned; if it said “by Friday”, that is not a date. Both templates above show the unassigned form for exactly this reason — a name written into minutes because somebody was standing nearby is how an action item is ignored politely for a month.
Or have the template filled in for you
Writing minutes during a meeting means missing half of it, and writing them afterwards means remembering it. Gorowame records the conversation — in a room, on a call, or from a browser tab — and produces the same four sections the template above uses: a summary, the key topics, the decisions, and the action items. Exporting a meeting gives you a Markdown file with those headings, plus the transcript underneath.
It follows the same rule about owners and dates. An owner is filled in only where the meeting named somebody who is actually in your workspace; otherwise the item says what was said and stays unassigned. A date is left empty rather than guessed at.
To be plain about what this is: Gorowame has no templates feature — you cannot upload one of these and have it filled in. The templates on this page are documents you copy. What the product does is write the same shape by itself, from the recording.
5 recordings free, no card required.
Questions about minutes
Can I use this in Word or Google Docs?
Yes. It is plain text with Markdown formatting, so it pastes into a document, Notion, Slack, Linear or an email and stays readable either way — the hashes become headings in anything that understands Markdown, and read as ordinary headings in anything that does not. There isno Word or PDF file to download, deliberately: a template you can read before you copy is more useful than one you have to open first.
What is the difference between meeting minutes and meeting notes?
Notes are for the people who were there. Minutes are a record for people who were not — which is why they carry the date, who was present, what was decided and who owns what. Formal minutes go further and record whether the meeting was quorate, whether the previous minutes were approved, and how each motion was voted on. That is the third template above.
Who should write the minutes?
Somebody other than the person running the meeting, if you can manage it. Chairing and minuting at the same time is how decisions end up recorded as discussions. Where that is not possible, recording the meeting and writing them up afterwards is the usual fix.
Should minutes name who said what?
Usually not, outside formal minutes where a motion needs a proposer and a seconder. Attributing every remark makes people careful about what they say in front of the person writing it down. Record what was decided and who owns the follow-up; leave the discussion unattributed unless somebody asks to be on the record.
Recording a meeting to write these up is the part nothing joins your call covers, and what it costs is on the pricing page.