How to Take Meeting Notes: A Simple Template and an Example

Good meeting notes record four things: the decisions, the action items (each with an owner and a due date), the questions still open, and the numbers or dates someone will need later. Learning how to take meeting notes is mostly learning what to leave out, which is nearly all the discussion that led to those four things. Set up the page before the meeting, mark each item as it comes up, and send a short recap within a day.

Below is a meeting notes template you can copy, a filled-in example and the difference between minutes and notes. We make Ophaya smart pens, and one short section near the end covers using one, but the rest works with any notebook or laptop.

What to write down in meeting notes

• Decisions, written as sentences that someone who missed the meeting could act on. "The sale email goes out March 24" is a decision. "Send date?" is a note to yourself.
• Action items with an owner, a task and a due date: "PS confirms stock for the featured items by Wednesday." A task without an owner tends not to get done, and one without a date drifts from week to week.
• Open questions, each with the name of whoever will find the answer.
• Key numbers and dates, such as budgets, prices quoted to a client and deadlines. Write the units, because "500" could be dollars or boxes.

Skip who said what during a debate, status updates that already live in a project tracker, and small talk. Don't write quotes word for word unless the wording will matter later, like a commitment made to a client.

How to take meeting notes before, during and after the meeting

Before the meeting

Get the agenda and copy each item onto your page as a heading with space under it. Write the meeting name, date and attendees at the top, and bring last meeting's open action items. If you are running the meeting, ask someone else to take notes. Leading a discussion and writing it down at once means one of them suffers, and it is usually the notes.

During the meeting

Write in short phrases and use initials. Give each kind of item its own mark in the margin, and keep the marks the same every week: a box for action items, a question mark for open questions, a star for decisions.

When the discussion goes in circles, stop writing and wait for it to land. Then ask: "Who owns that, and by when?" If a decision or a number sounds vague, read it back ("So the send date moves to the 24th?"). It takes five seconds and catches mistakes while everyone is still in the room.

After the meeting

Clean up your notes within the hour, while you still remember what "LR photos??" meant. Then send a recap to everyone who attended and anyone with an action item, within one working day. A recap that arrives three days later has to compete with everyone's own memory of what was agreed. Put the main decision in the subject line and the action items at the top, since that is the part most people read first. Keep each recurring meeting's notes in one shared document or folder.

A meeting notes template and an example

Meeting notes template

Copy this into a document or set up a notebook page the same way. It fits most business meeting notes, from a weekly check-in to a client call.

Meeting:
Date and time:
Attendees:
Absent:
Note taker:
Agenda:

Decisions
*

Action items (owner, task, due date)
[ ]
[ ]

Open questions (who will find the answer, by when)
?

Key numbers and dates
*

Next meeting:

Example: notes from a made-up weekly meeting

This example is invented, including the shop, the people and the numbers. It shows a 30-minute check-in at a small online store planning a spring sale email.

Meeting: Spring sale email, weekly check-in
Date and time: Tue Mar 10, 9:30 to 10:00
Attendees: Dana M. (marketing, chair), Luis R. (design),
           Priya S. (operations), Sam K. (notes)
Absent: Kim T. (finance)

Decisions
* Send date moves from Mar 17 to Mar 24 so the new
  product photos are ready.
* Discount stays at 15% for the first 48 hours.

Action items (owner, task, due date)
[ ] LR: final banner and 2 photos to Dana, Thu Mar 12
[ ] PS: confirm stock for the 3 featured items, Wed Mar 11
[ ] DM: update copy, send test email, Fri Mar 13
[ ] SK: ask Kim if the $500 paid boost fits the budget, Wed Mar 11

Open questions (who will find the answer, by when)
? Include customers who bought in the last 30 days?
  Dana decides by Fri Mar 13

Key numbers and dates
* Email list: 8,400 subscribers
* Sale runs Mar 24 to Mar 31

Next meeting: Tue Mar 17, 9:30

The ten minutes spent on the banner color are not in it. The recap email from this page would say "New send date Mar 24" in the subject line and list the four action items first. For habits that help outside meetings too, see how to take better notes.

Meeting minutes vs meeting notes

Meeting minutes are the formal record kept for a board, committee or other group that decides by motion and vote. Many such groups follow Robert's Rules of Order, and its official FAQ puts it plainly: "Minutes are a record of what was done at a meeting, not a record of what was said." The same answer calls it improper to summarize the discussion in them.

Michigan State University's academic governance office bases its guide to writing minutes on Robert's Rules. It lists the date, time and place, who presided, each main motion in its exact wording with the name of the member who made it, the voting results and the time of adjournment. Minutes then go to the group for approval, and if members correct them at that point, Robert's Rules says they are recorded as approved "as corrected."

Meeting notes are working notes for a team. Nobody votes on them, and they can keep a line of context that minutes would drop, such as "LR worried photos won't be ready." If you are a board or committee secretary, follow your group's minutes format instead.

Recording and AI notetakers: ask first

An audio recording, or an AI notetaker that joins a video call and writes a summary, can take pressure off the note taker. Ask before you use either. Say at the start that you would like to record and why, check your company's policy, and take notes by hand if anyone objects. Consent rules differ from state to state, and we go through them in recording pen vs smart pen.

We think someone should still write down the decisions and action items. An automatic summary can credit a task to the wrong person, so read it before you send it. If a full transcript matters more than your own notes, see smart pen vs AI voice recorder.

Handwriting or a laptop in meetings

For taking meeting notes, typing is faster, and a laptop lets you draft the recap as you go. Handwriting is slower, which forces you to choose what matters. Research on which helps people remember more is mixed and mostly looks at students in lectures: a 2014 study by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer found laptop note takers did worse on conceptual questions, while a 2019 replication found no consistent difference. In a small meeting room we would pick a notebook, because a laptop screen between you and the speaker can look like you are answering email. On a video call, use whatever is faster. We compare both in handwriting vs typing notes.

Handwritten meeting notes with a smart pen

A smart pen lets you write by hand and still send a typed recap. The Ophaya pen has an infrared camera that reads a printed dot pattern, so it captures handwriting only on Ophaya dot-code notebooks or the Ophaya LCD writing tablet. Ordinary paper gets the ink but no digital copy. Pages sync over Bluetooth to the free Ophaya Pro+ app, and if your phone isn't connected, the pen stores about 1,000 pages and syncs them when it reconnects.

After the meeting, convert the page to editable text with OCR, check the names, dates and numbers, and paste the action items into your recap. If everyone agreed to a recording, the app records on your phone or tablet (the pen has no microphone) and links the audio to what you wrote. None of this needs a subscription.

When someone asks a month later what discount the team agreed on, you search for "discount" instead of flipping pages. Our smart pen note-taking workflow follows a client call from setup to follow-up email.

Frequently asked questions

How do you take good minutes of a meeting?

Use your group's existing format, often the layout of the last approved minutes. Record the date, place and attendance, each motion in its exact wording with who made it, and the result of every vote. Leave out the debate and your own opinions.

Who should take notes in a meeting?

Anyone except the person running it. For a recurring meeting, rotate the job so everyone learns what useful notes look like.

How long should meeting notes be?

Long enough that someone who missed the meeting knows what was decided and what they have to do. For a 30-minute check-in, that is usually under a page.

Should I send meeting notes to people who weren't there?

Yes, to anyone with an action item or whose work changes because of a decision. In the example above, Kim from finance gets the recap because the paid boost needs her answer.