At Remitly, we’re here to support you and your career. If you’re new to the UAE, keeping meeting minutes is an invaluable organisational trick that will create a record of your work, whether you’re starting a brand new small business or working at an established corporation.In this guide, you’ll learn about keeping meeting minutes, which is just one of many essential organisational strategies for small business owners. We’ll also provide you with a customisable template to save you time and effort, plus some other resources you can access for free.
Why meeting minutes matter
Any time members of your company are coming together to discuss or work on official business, notes should be taken. These notes are helpful to have for both internal and external reasons.
What are meeting minutes?
“Minutes of meeting” and “meeting minutes” are the fancy phrases that refer to notes taken at business meetings. Meeting minutes are considered an official and legal record of company actions.
The importance of keeping accurate minutes
Meeting minutes are essential to your company’s legal standing. They prove that your business is in operation and provide a history of its actions. Meeting minutes provide transparency for any stakeholders and can serve as evidence in a legal capacity.
Aside from any legal implications, meeting minutes can be helpful to track discussions, work, and pitched ideas. They serve as a reference point for anyone who wants to review the company’s actions and can also support any team members who were absent from a meeting.
Planning a meeting: agenda and next steps
In order to have good meeting minutes, you have to plan a good meeting. Help your staff feel actionable by ensuring that meetings are purposeful and organised. Here’s how.
Preparing an effective meeting agenda
As you plan for a meeting, ensure that all of the meeting attendees are necessary and relevant to the topic being addressed. Keep your agenda clear and to the point, avoiding the addition of extraneous topics. Here are some potential meeting agenda items to consider:
- Company-wide and department announcements
- Celebrations of impressive employee performances
- Updates on in-progress projects
- Action items to discuss
- Important upcoming deadlines
- Growth points or constructive feedback
- Time for additional items that the team might want to discuss
Having a good mix of positive meeting items, like staff celebrations, helps balance out any potentially difficult, stressful, or negative topics. Nestling difficult feedback between positive points is often referred to as the sandwich method.
Tracking action items and next steps
As you develop your meeting agenda, refer to the minutes from the previous meeting. Follow up on any action items identified at the last meeting. Reviewing pervious minutes ensures that no important task gets sidelined. Check in on other relevant project management documents before planning your meeting agenda.
Benefits of using templates
If you’re a small business owner, chances are you have a long list of things to do. Make your life easier by using templates whenever possible. Templates save you time and energy and provide some additional benefits as well.
Enhancing meeting efficiency and productivity
Using a template for minutes in a meeting setting makes accurate note-taking easier. Employees familiar with the layout and structure of uniform meeting minutes will be able to fill them out quickly and efficiently—almost like second nature.
Whether you have a designated meeting secretary or the responsibility of taking meeting minutes is shared, a standard minutes template will help keep everything organised.
Ultimately, this increases productivity by taking the pressure of taking down minutes. You will be able to focus on deeply engaging your employees in discussion, brainstorming, and problem-solving instead.
Streamlining documentation and tracking
Using templates ensures document consistency. This means that when someone refers to your company’s minutes, they’ll easily recognise the document.
This actually makes the document more useful, allowing viewers to easily find familiar sections of the minutes and quickly access the information they’re looking for. Consistent minutes can lead to increased efficiency.
In addition, consistency across company documents provides an opportunity to reinforce your brand image through the use of colours, logos, and fonts. Meeting minutes that reflect your brand increase your company’s professionalism.
How to write effective meeting minutes
To keep effective meeting minutes, focus on creating clear, accurate, and concise statements or phrases. You don’t have to record what’s being said verbatim. Instead, try to glean the most important main ideas and capture these.
It’s a good idea to review the agenda before the meeting, especially if you plan to record the minutes. This will allow you to understand what topics will be discussed and in what order.
Key components of meeting minutes
Some essentials to capture during a meeting are outlined below:
- Meeting details: Include the date, time, location (physical or virtual), attendees, and the names of absent invitees
- Purpose: State the meeting’s objectives and goals
- Agenda: Document each item discussed, then record relevant action items or decisions made
- Action items: Identify action items, who is responsible for them, and relevant deadlines or check-in dates
- Decisions: If a point on the agenda has reached a conclusion, record it clearly
- Reports and documents: Record where related reports or documents relevant to action items or decisions can be found or attach them to the minutes directly
- Next meeting information: Include the time, date, and location of the next meeting
- Authorship details: Provide the name of the employee who took the minutes and leave a space for them to be approved by a secondary person
Tips for accurate and comprehensive record-keeping
The key to keeping the meetings of a meeting is to be objective. Record all of the discussed points in a reportorial way, even if you don’t necessarily agree with them. Avoid personal assumptions or opinions when recording the minutes.
Use a consistent verb tense when you’re taking notes. It’s typical to record meeting minutes in the past tense, although you can set up whatever expectation works best for your company.
When your minutes are finished, distribute them to meeting attendees as soon as possible or within 24 hours. Allow others to review and approve the minutes before they are finalised and kept on file.
Meeting minutes examples and templates
Meeting minutes can be kept in any format that works for your company. Word processing applications like Microsoft Word or Google Docs allow your meeting secretary to take minutes on their laptop or device easily. These can then be digitally shared with relevant parties after the meeting.
The template below can be copied and pasted into the word processor of your choice. From there, you can customise your minutes with a consistent header that features your company’s logo and colours. You can also change the font—a standard font like Arial or Times New Roman in size 11 or 12 ensures readability and professionalism.
Classic template
MEETING MINUTES
Meeting Title: [eg. End of Year Update Meeting]
Date: [eg. 20 December 2025]
Time: [eg. 10:30 AM GMT+4]
Location: [eg. Conference Room, Abu Dhabi, UAE]
Attendees:
- [Name, Title]
- [Name, Title]
- [Name, Title]
Absent:
- [Name, Title]
- [Name, Title]
- [Name, Title]
Agenda Items:
- Item 1 [eg. Project X Update]
- Discussion Summary: [Briefly summarise the discussion]
- Decisions Made: [List decisions made]
- Action Items:
- [Action Item 1] assigned to [Name, Title] due on [Date]
- [Action Item 2] assigned to [Name, Title] due on [Date]
- [Action Item 3] assigned to [Name, Title] due on [Date]
- Item 2 [eg. Budget Review]
- Discussion Summary: [Briefly summarise the discussion]
- Decisions Made: [List decisions made]
- Action Items:
- [Action Item 1] assigned to [Name, Title] due on [Date]
- [Action Item 2] assigned to [Name, Title] due on [Date]
- [Action Item 3] assigned to [Name, Title] due on [Date]
- Item 3 [eg. Next Steps]
- Discussion Summary: [Briefly summarise the discussion]
- Decisions Made: [List decisions made]
- Action Items:
- [Action Item 1] assigned to [Name, Title] due on [Date]
- [Action Item 2] assigned to [Name, Title] due on [Date]
- [Action Item 3] assigned to [Name, Title] due on [Date]
Relevant Reports and Documents:
- [Attached document 1]
- [Attached document 2]
- [Attached document 3]
- Next Meeting: [DATE] at [TIME] in [LOCATION]
- Minutes Prepared by: [Name, Title]
- Minutes Approved by: [Name, Title] on [DATE]
Free customisable templates for small businesses
The following companies provide more options for meeting minutes templates. They are all free to use and easy to download and customise.
FAQs
Is it a legal requirement in the UAE for small businesses to have meeting minutes that are organised and up-to-date?
Yes. If your company has more than one member and conducts official meetings, recording and maintaining minutes of meetings is required under the UAE Companies Law Article 100 “Register of General Assembly Meetings.”
What other types of templates can I use to save myself time as a small business owner?
Using templates wherever possible saves you time and energy in addition to maintaining the uniformity of your company’s official documents. Use templates for invoices, project management, and official communications.