Corporate Secretarial Service Tips: Preparing Minutes For Important Board Meetings

When users sign up for corporate secretarial service, they usually come with certain expectations that the corporate secretary should fulfill. Apart from essential services, the preparation of minutes for important board meetings also lie within the responsibilities of the corporate secretary. Here are some corporate secretarial service tips for doing just so:

Essential Information Recording

Essential information that contributes to the structure of the discussion should be recorded by the corporate secretary. Some examples are the length of discussions that are important, deliberations, date of the meeting, start and end times, location, the attendees present, the presence/maintenance of a quorum, materials that are distributed, topics that are covered and decisions that have been made. Providing good corporate secretarial service also includes clearly identifying separate meetings and tasks, as notes/minutes are typically incomplete by nature.

Identification

The more organisation/structure the minutes prepared are, the easier a task to interpret/understand when studied. Corporate secretaries are recommended to make use of the particular meeting agenda to organise and label their minutes/notes. Transitions from different topics should be indicated in presentations by management, advisory firms, executive sessions and counsel.

Clear identification/description of the board meeting’s deliberative process should also be included. As an added corporate secretarial tip when it comes to preparing minutes: Collective or passive voice descriptions should be used to avoid attribution errors.

Accuracy

In certain situations, differing opinions from directors regarding discussed events can be resolved with reference to the corporate secretary’s notes some time in the future. Therefore, it is important to provide clarity and accuracy when preparing minutes. Meeting minutes that contain clear discernable objectives can reduce the possibility of misinterpretation, thereby lowering risks of said information being used by adversaries.

Consistency

Another good corporate secretarial service tip when preparing minutes is to keep the standard minute preparation format consistent. Make use of the same fonts, styles, formats, design elements, organisation of information, and other key elements that make up your entire note. Also bearing in mind local statutory requirements, it would be a good corporate secretarial service step to make sure that the statutory requirements specifically created for minutes have been met.

Distribution

After preparation, the corporate secretary should distribute their draft minutes to directors so that they can be