Good meeting minutes record what was decided and who will do what, not everything that was said. If you take the minutes for a board, an HOA, a club or a PTA, you can do it in three steps: record the meeting, turn the recording into text, then write the minutes from that text using a template. The recording means you can listen along instead of typing, and check the details afterwards.

What minutes are for

Minutes are the official, short record of a meeting. A good set answers four questions for someone who wasn't there: who attended, what was discussed, what was decided, and who does what next. They are not a transcript. Leave out the back and forth, and write down the outcome.

What your group has to include, and how long it has to keep the minutes, depends on your bylaws, your state or country, and any rules the organization follows. Check those first. This article gives you a practical structure, not legal advice.

Pick a template

Start from a template so you never face a blank page. The meeting minutes template works for any group, and there are versions for a board, an HOA, a club, an AGM, a PTA and a church or parish council. Each one comes as a blank template in Word format. To see what finished minutes look like, read the examples of meeting minutes.

A few habits make the job easier. Write the motion exactly as it was voted on, because that wording is what counts later. Record names for actions and decisions, but keep opinions out. Use the same headings every time, so people know where to look.

Step 1: Record the meeting (how to record minutes in a meeting)

Tell everyone at the start that you are recording and why: to make accurate minutes, and that the recording will be deleted once they are approved, if that's what your group decides. Then ask if anyone objects. Recording rules differ by country and, in the US, by state, and some groups have their own policy, so agree on it openly.

For a meeting in a room, put your phone face up in the middle of the table, close to the people who talk most. Record with the Voice Memos app on an iPhone or any recorder app on Android, or record straight into My notes from your browser. Before the meeting starts, say a test sentence and play it back. A phone in the middle of a small table is fine. In a big hall, a speaker at the far end will be hard to hear, so ask people to talk one at a time and repeat questions from the floor.

To record the minutes in a meeting from your browser, open My notes, create a note and press Record before the chair calls the meeting to order. Press stop when it is adjourned. The recording stays in the note and the transcript appears in it a few minutes later. Keep the screen awake and the device plugged in for a long meeting.

Also write a few notes while you listen: the times of the votes, and the names of who moved and seconded. A quick time next to a motion helps you find it in the recording later.

Step 2: Turn the recording into text

Upload the file to Supertranscription. It accepts MP3, M4A, WAV, MP4 and other common formats, and a long meeting is uploaded in one go. A few minutes later you get the text with the voices separated (Speaker 1, Speaker 2…) and a time marker for each word. The site doesn't know your members' names, so you add them yourself.

Without an account, the first file is free and the transcript covers the first 30 minutes, so a longer meeting will be cut. To transcribe all of it, sign in with Google or Apple: until January 2027, Pro is free for everyone, with 10 hours of transcription a month and no card (pricing). There is more on this on the meeting minutes page, and on recording the meeting itself.

It works on a finished recording. There is no live transcription, and no bot that joins the meeting.

Step 3: Write the minutes from the transcript

You can write them yourself, using the transcript to check who said what and the exact wording of motions. Search the text for "motion", "second", "all in favor" and "opposed" to jump to the votes.

Or let AI do a first draft. In My notes, import the recording into a note (the note's menu has "Import recording"), and the transcript appears in it. Then open "Ask AI" and give it your template. For example:

This is the transcript of our board meeting. Speaker 1 is Dana (chair), Speaker 2 is Luis (treasurer), Speaker 3 is Priya (secretary). Write minutes with this structure: attendance, approval of previous minutes, reports, each item of business with the motion, who moved and seconded it, the vote, and the actions with owners and dates, and the next meeting. Write only what was said. If something is unclear, mark it with a question mark.

The AI first shows you the new version with the changes highlighted. You then choose whether to replace the note, make a new note or add the text at the end. To answer, the note and its transcripts are sent to Google Gemini. It can also pull out only the to-do list or the decisions, if that is all you need.

Always check the result against the transcript. The AI can get wrong who agreed to what, and figures, dates and the wording of motions should be confirmed in the text. If the meeting was confidential, check what your group allows before you put it into an AI tool. You can copy a note out as Markdown, or paste its text into Word or Google Docs.

After the meeting

  • Send a draft quickly, while people still remember it. Ask for corrections by a set date.
  • Get the minutes approved at the next meeting, then file the final version where the group keeps its records.
  • Decide what happens to the recording and keep to it. Some groups delete it once the minutes are approved. Others keep it for a set period. In My notes, the recording and transcript stay in your account until you delete them.
  • Keep the transcript out of the minutes. The minutes are the record. The transcript is your working tool.

A note on formal bodies

If your group follows formal rules of order, or if the minutes have legal weight (for example for a corporation, a condominium association or a public body), the required form can be strict. A transcript is a good base, but it doesn't replace the official minutes, and someone responsible should read the final text.

Where the recording goes

Speech recognition is done by ElevenLabs (United States), which receives the recording only to process it. We don't keep the file uploaded from the homepage. In My notes, the recording and its transcript stay in your account until you delete them. The details are in the privacy policy.