Most meeting minutes fail in one of two ways. Either they are a wall of text that nobody reads, or they are three bullet points that nobody can act on a week later. Good minutes sit in between: a short, accurate record of who was there, what was decided and who is doing what by when. This guide covers what to include, a before, during and after process, four templates you can copy, a worked example that turns messy notes into clean minutes, the conventions formal boards follow, and where an AI notetaker helps and where it does not.
Quick answer: To write meeting minutes, record the date, attendees and absentees, then under each agenda item write the decision reached and the action items agreed, each with one owner and a due date. Skip the narrative of the discussion. Send team and client minutes within a day; formal board minutes go to the chair first and are approved at the next meeting. An AI notetaker can draft minutes from an online call, but a person must check them first.
Key takeaways
- Minutes record what was done, not what was said. Decisions and action items are the core; discussion is optional context.
- Every action item needs one named owner, a specific deliverable and a real date. "The team will look into it" is not an action item.
- Build your template from the agenda before the meeting, so during the meeting you only fill gaps.
- Send team and client minutes within a day. Formal minutes stay drafts until the body approves them.
- AI notetakers can draft minutes from Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams calls, but they cannot judge what was formally decided, and they do not work for in-person or phone meetings.
What are meeting minutes?
Meeting minutes are the official written record of a meeting: who attended, what was decided, and what each person agreed to do next. They exist so that the people who were there remember the same thing, the people who were not can catch up in two minutes, and the organization has evidence of its decisions later.
The rulebook that many boards and committees follow puts the principle in one line. The Robert's Rules of Order FAQ says minutes "are a record of what was done at a meeting, not a record of what was said." That rule is just as useful for a Monday team meeting as for a board of directors.
The need is real. Microsoft's 2023 Work Trend Index, a survey of 31,000 workers in 31 markets, found that 55% of people say next steps at the end of a meeting are unclear and 56% say it is hard to summarize what happened. Clear minutes are the cheapest fix for both problems.
What is the difference between meeting minutes and meeting notes?
The terms are often used interchangeably, but they are different documents with different jobs.
Meeting notes are the informal record a person keeps for themselves: shorthand, questions, half-sentences and reminders. A meeting transcript is a word-for-word record of everything said, usually produced from a recording. Meeting minutes are the cleaned-up, shared record built from either one, written so that someone who was not there can act on it.
| Meeting notes | Meeting minutes | Transcript | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Personal memory aid | Shared record of decisions and actions | Verbatim record of everything said |
| Written by | Anyone, for themselves | A named minute-taker or secretary | Software or a stenographer |
| Audience | The note-taker | Attendees, absentees, sometimes auditors or regulators | Whoever needs to check exact wording |
| Detail | Whatever the writer wants | Decisions, owners, dates, brief context | Every word |
| Approval | None | Formal minutes are approved at the next meeting | None |
| Typical length | Varies | Half a page to three pages | Many pages per hour |
A meeting summary sits between notes and minutes. It is a short digest of the main points, and it is what most AI tools produce. A summary becomes minutes once you add attendance, state each decision precisely and give every action an owner and a date.
What should be included in meeting minutes?
Use this checklist. "Required" items belong in every set of minutes of that type; "Optional" items are worth including when they apply.
| Element | What to write | Board or committee | Team meeting | Client meeting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meeting name and type | "Regular board meeting", "Weekly product sync" | Required | Required | Required |
| Date, start time, place or platform | Add the time zone for remote meetings | Required | Required | Required |
| Attendees and absentees | Names; note late arrivals and early departures if votes happen | Required | Required | Required |
| Chair and minute-taker | Who ran it and who recorded it | Required | Optional | Optional |
| Quorum | Whether enough voting members were present | Required | Not needed | Not needed |
| Approval of previous minutes | Approved as circulated or as corrected | Required | Not needed | Not needed |
| Decisions | One sentence each, including any condition | Required | Required | Required |
| Motions and votes | Exact wording, who moved it, the result | Required | Not needed | Not needed |
| Action items | Owner, task, due date | Required | Required | Required |
| Brief context | Only what a reader needs to understand a decision | Optional | Optional | Optional |
| Reports received | The title, and that it was received; attach it rather than summarize it | Required | Optional | Not needed |
| Parked items | Topics deferred, and who will bring them back | Optional | Required | Optional |
| Next meeting | Date, time, place or link | Required | Required | Required |
| Adjournment time | When the meeting ended | Required | Optional | Not needed |
| Approval and signature | Secretary's signature and the approval date | Required | Not needed | Not needed |
What to leave out of meeting minutes
- Verbatim debate. Who argued what is rarely needed and can cause trouble later. If the wording matters, it belongs in the motion or the decision.
- Opinions and adjectives. "A heated discussion" or "Tom was unconvinced" is commentary, not a record.
- Side conversations and jokes. If it did not change an outcome, it does not go in.
- Sensitive personal details. Health, performance and disciplinary matters belong in a confidential record, if anywhere, not in minutes sent to the whole team.
- Decisions nobody made. If an item ended without one, write "No decision; returning on [date]" rather than implying an outcome.
How do you write meeting minutes, step by step?
The work splits into three phases. Most of the quality comes from the first and the last. The meeting itself is the easy part if you prepared.
Before the meeting
- Get the agenda. Minutes follow the agenda, item by item. If there is no agenda, ask the organizer for one; our guide to meeting agendas that work has formats you can suggest.
- Build your template from it. Paste each agenda item as a heading, pre-fill the date, the expected attendees and the start time, and leave space under each item for "Decision" and "Actions". During the meeting you then fill blanks instead of writing from scratch.
- Know the decision rules. For a board or committee, check how many members make a quorum, who can vote, and whether your bylaws require anything specific in the minutes.
- Bring the previous minutes and the open action list. Formal meetings usually approve the last minutes first, and most meetings begin by checking last time's actions.
- Settle recording in advance. If you will record the meeting or use an AI notetaker, say so in the invite. Laws differ by country and by US state; our guide on whether it is legal to record a meeting covers the consent rules.
During the meeting
- Record attendance and the start time. Mark absentees and anyone who joins late or leaves early, because it matters if a vote happens while they are out.
- Write decisions, not dialogue. When an item closes, write the outcome in one sentence. If you are not sure what was decided, ask: "Can I read back what I have as the decision?" Chairs almost always welcome it.
- Capture every action in owner, task and date form. If someone says "we should look at that", ask who and by when before the meeting moves on.
- Take motions word for word. In a formal meeting, ask the chair to restate the motion before the vote so you can write the exact wording.
- Keep a parked list. Anything deferred goes in a separate list with a name next to it, so it does not quietly disappear.
After the meeting
- Write up within a day, while you still remember what your shorthand meant. Turn notes into full sentences, keep the agenda order, and gather all actions into one list.
- Check gaps with the chair or organizer before sending. Unowned actions, unclear decisions and numbers you are unsure of go back to them as questions. Never resolve them by guessing.
- Send the minutes to attendees and to anyone who has to act, with the decisions and the action list visible at the top.
- Track the actions until the next meeting, where open items are reviewed first.
- For formal minutes, present them for approval at the next meeting, record any corrections, then sign and file the approved version.
How soon should meeting minutes be sent?
Minutes should arrive before people start acting on their own memory of the meeting. For most meetings that means within one working day, and for client meetings the same day.
| Meeting type | Draft ready | Sent to | Final version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daily stand-up or short check-in | Usually not minuted; post actions in the team channel | Team | Not needed |
| Weekly team or project meeting | Same day | Attendees and absentees | The version you sent |
| Client or sales meeting | Same day, ideally within hours | Client attendees, plus your internal team | The sent version, filed in your CRM |
| Board or committee meeting | Within a few working days, to the chair first | Members, usually in the next meeting pack | Approved at the next meeting |
| Public body such as a council or school board | As your state's open-meetings law sets | Members and the public | As the law requires |
For US tax-exempt organizations there is a concrete benchmark. Form 990 asks whether the organization contemporaneously documented the meetings of its governing body and of committees with authority to act for it. The IRS instructions for Form 990 define contemporaneous as by the later of the next meeting of that body or 60 days after the meeting, and say the documentation can be approved minutes, email or similar writings that explain the action taken, when it was taken and who made the decision.
For client meetings, the minutes and the follow-up email are often the same document: a short recap of what you heard, what you agreed and the next steps. Our guide to the follow-up email after a sales meeting has templates for that version.
How long should meeting minutes be?
There is no standard length, and longer is not better. Length should track the number of decisions and actions, not the length of the meeting. A two-hour strategy session that reached three decisions can fit on one page, while a 45-minute board meeting with eight motions may need three.
A practical test: someone who missed the meeting should be able to read the minutes in about two minutes and know what changed and what they owe. If they cannot, the minutes are either too thin, with vague decisions and no owners, or too thick, with a narrative of the discussion burying the outcomes.
Targets that work for most teams:
- Team meeting: half a page to one page.
- Client meeting: an email-length recap, with your internal observations kept separately in your CRM.
- Board or committee: one to three pages, with reports attached rather than summarized.
How do you write action items in meeting minutes?
An action item is a specific task that one named person agreed to complete by a stated date as a result of the meeting. The format matters more than it looks, because vague actions are the main reason the same topic comes back meeting after meeting.
Write one line per action, always in the same order:
[Owner] will [verb] [specific deliverable] by [day, date]. ([Open/Done])
| Weak action item | Why it fails | Rewritten |
|---|---|---|
| Look into pricing | No owner, no deliverable, no date | Dan will send two pricing options to the group by Thu, Oct 22. |
| Marketing to follow up | A team is not an owner | Maria will email the three webinar leads a recap by Fri, Oct 23. |
| Fix staging ASAP | "ASAP" is not a date | Dan will restore staging and post the cause in #web by Wed, Oct 21. |
| Discuss budget next time | That is an agenda item, not an action | Tom will bring the Q1 budget draft to the Oct 26 meeting. |
Three rules keep the list honest:
- One owner per action. If two people share a task, one of them owns it and the other helps.
- A verb you can see done. Send, book, publish, decide, draft. "Think about" and "explore" cannot be checked off.
- A real date. "Next week" becomes a date before the minutes go out.
Meeting minutes templates you can copy
Here are four templates, from most to least formal. Copy one into your document tool, delete what you do not need, and save it as your standard so every set of minutes looks the same.
Template 1: Formal board or committee minutes
[ORGANIZATION NAME]
Minutes of the [regular/special] meeting of the
[Board of Directors / committee name]
Date: [Month Day, Year]
Place: [Address, or video platform]
Called to order: [00:00, time zone] by [Chair name]
Present: [Voting members present]
Absent: [Names] (apologies from [names])
Also present: [Staff, guests, advisers]
Quorum: A quorum was present.
Secretary: [Name]
1. Approval of the agenda
The agenda was approved [as circulated/as amended].
2. Minutes of the previous meeting
The minutes of the [date] meeting were approved
[as circulated/as corrected].
3. Reports
The [Treasurer's] report was received and is
attached. [No action taken.]
4. [Agenda item title]
Motion: "[Exact wording as voted on.]"
Moved by: [Name]
Result: [Adopted / Defeated / Postponed to (date) /
Referred to (committee)]
Vote: [For X, Against Y, Abstained Z / by voice]
5. [Agenda item title]
[Decision, or "Discussed; no action taken."]
Action items
[Owner] will [task] by [date].
Next meeting: [Date, time, place]
Adjourned: [00:00]
Submitted by: ______________ [Secretary], [date]
Approved on: [Date of approval]
Signed: ______________ [Chair]
Two choices in this template are deliberate. It records who moved each motion but not who seconded it, which is the Robert's Rules default unless the assembly directs otherwise, because a second only means a member wants the motion discussed. And it records the result of every motion, including the ones that failed.
Template 2: Team meeting minutes
[Team name] meeting minutes
Date: [Weekday, Month Day, Year], [start]-[end] [time zone]
Where: [Room, or Zoom/Meet/Teams]
Attendees: [Names]
Absent: [Names]
Facilitator: [Name] Minutes: [Name]
DECISIONS
- [Decision in one sentence, with any condition]
- [Decision]
ACTION ITEMS
- [Owner] will [task] by [date].
- [Owner] will [task] by [date].
UPDATES (one line each, only what someone needs later)
- [Agenda item]: [status, key number, open question]
PARKED
- [Topic], back on [date], owner: [Name]
Last meeting's actions: [X done, Y still open, listed above]
Next meeting: [Date, time, link]
Decisions and actions come first because that is what readers look for. The updates section is optional and should stay short.
Template 3: Client or sales meeting minutes
Subject: Recap and next steps: [Their company] + [Your company]
Hi [first name],
Thanks for your time on [weekday, date]. Here is a short
record of what we covered, so we are working from the
same notes.
Attendees
[Their names and roles]; [your names and roles]
What we heard
- Goal: [their goal, in their words]
- Today: [current process or tool]
- Constraints: [timing, budget range, who else decides]
What we agreed
- [Agreement, e.g. "A two-week pilot with the support
team, starting November 2"]
Next steps
- [Their name] will [task] by [date].
- [Your name] will [task] by [date].
Next meeting: [date and time, or "I'll send a link to
book a time"]
If I have missed or misstated anything, reply and I'll
correct it.
[Your name]
Send this version to the client. Keep internal observations such as objections, pricing strategy or deal risk in your CRM, not in a section at the bottom of the same document, where sooner or later it gets forwarded by mistake. For first calls, the discovery call guide covers what is worth capturing.
Template 4: One-line action items and an action log
Format:
[Owner] will [verb] [deliverable] by [day, date]. ([status])
Examples:
Maria Lopez will get Legal sign-off on the pricing
copy by Tue, Oct 27. (Open)
Tom Reid will request CFO approval for the ads
budget by Fri, Oct 23. (Open)
Dan Okafor will restore staging and post the cause
in #web by Wed, Oct 21. (Done)
For a running list across meetings, keep an action log: one table that every set of minutes updates, so open actions survive from one meeting to the next instead of living in old emails.
| # | Action | Owner | Due | Status | Raised at |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 | Get Legal sign-off on pricing copy | Maria Lopez | Oct 27 | Open | Oct 19 meeting |
| 15 | Request CFO approval for ads budget | Tom Reid | Oct 23 | Open | Oct 19 meeting |
| 16 | Restore staging, post cause in #web | Dan Okafor | Oct 21 | Done | Oct 19 meeting |
Example: turning messy notes into clean minutes
These are the kind of raw notes a minute-taker, here called Sam, might actually have at the end of a 40-minute project meeting:
mon web relaunch mtg
P, Dan, Maria, Tom (late ~15m), Lee out, me
- launch date?? Dan: nov 3 too tight. Maria wants
10th for legal. agreed 10th?
- pricing pg copy still w/ legal, M chasing
- ads $4k? Tom ok if CFO signs off
- staging broken AGAIN. Dan on it
- someone needs to tell support re new FAQ
- same time next wk
And here are the minutes Sam sent after a five-minute check with Priya, who chaired the meeting:
Website relaunch: weekly project meeting
Date: Monday, October 19, 2026, 10:00-10:40 ET (Zoom)
Present: Priya Shah (chair), Dan Okafor, Maria Lopez,
Tom Reid (joined 10:15), Sam Patel
Apologies: Lee Chen
Minutes: Sam Patel
DECISIONS
1. The launch moves from Tuesday, November 3 to
Tuesday, November 10, 2026, to allow time for legal
review of the pricing page.
2. A $4,000 paid-ads budget for the launch is approved,
subject to CFO sign-off.
UPDATES
- Pricing page copy: with Legal for review.
- Staging environment: down; fix in progress.
ACTION ITEMS
- Maria Lopez will get Legal sign-off on the pricing
page copy by Tue, Oct 27.
- Tom Reid will request CFO approval for the ads
budget by Fri, Oct 23.
- Dan Okafor will restore staging and post the cause
in #web by Wed, Oct 21.
- Priya Shah will brief Support on the new FAQ
content by Mon, Nov 2.
Next meeting: Monday, October 26, 2026, 10:00 ET (Zoom)
What changed, and why:
- Initials became full names. "P" and "M" mean nothing to a reader three months from now, or to Lee, who was out.
- Question marks were resolved, not copied. "agreed 10th?" became a decision only after Priya confirmed it. A minute-taker should never promote a question mark to a decision on their own.
- The conditional decision kept its condition. The ads budget is approved subject to CFO sign-off, and the minutes say so, with an action to get that sign-off.
- "Someone" got an owner. The note about briefing Support had no owner. Sam asked Priya, who took it. Unowned items get an owner by asking, never by guessing.
- Status items stayed short. The pricing copy and staging updates needed no decision, so each gets one line.
- Commentary disappeared. "staging broken AGAIN" became "down; fix in progress". Frustration is not a record.
- Decisions and actions moved to the top. A reader skimming for "what do I owe" finds it without reading the updates.
How do you take minutes at a board meeting?
Board and committee minutes are the organization's legal record of its decisions, so they follow stricter conventions than team minutes. Most bodies use Robert's Rules of Order or a simplified version set out in their bylaws. Your bylaws and any law that applies to you take priority over every convention below, so check them first. If you take minutes for a public body such as a city council or school board, your state's open-meetings law may set the content, the deadline and public access.
Quorum
A quorum is the minimum number of voting members who must be present for the body to conduct business, as defined in its bylaws. Record whether a quorum was present at the start, and note the time if members leave and it is lost. The Robert's Rules FAQ states that "it is never permissible to transact substantive business in the absence of a quorum," so minutes that show business being done without one create a real problem for the organization.
Motions and votes
A motion is a formal proposal that the body take a specific action, decided by a vote. For each motion, record the exact wording as voted on, the name of the member who moved it, and the result: adopted, defeated, postponed or referred to a committee. Record vote counts when a count was taken, and individual names when a roll call was held or your rules require it. Amendments that changed the wording are reflected in the final wording you record.
Approval of the previous minutes
Minutes are a draft until the body approves them, usually as one of the first items at the next meeting. When corrections are made at that point, the Robert's Rules guidance is that the corrections go into the text of the minutes being approved, and the new minutes simply say the previous ones were approved "as corrected," without describing the change. Once minutes are approved, the secretary does not rewrite them; a later correction needs a formal motion to amend something previously adopted.
Discussion and reports
By default, summarizing debate is not part of formal minutes. Record the decision and, where it genuinely helps, a one-line reason. Reports from officers or committees are noted as received and attached, not paraphrased. Some bodies choose to record more context, which is fine when their bylaws or a vote of the body ask for it.
Closed or executive sessions
An executive session is a closed part of a meeting, limited to members and invited guests, often used for personnel, legal or contract matters. Keep those minutes separate, limit them to what was decided, and share them only with people entitled to see them. Follow your bylaws and your lawyer here rather than a template.
Signing and keeping the minutes
The secretary signs the approved minutes, and in many organizations the chair signs too. Retention depends on where you operate. In the UK, section 248 of the Companies Act 2006 requires every company to record minutes of all proceedings at directors' meetings and to keep them for at least ten years. In the US, state corporate and nonprofit law, your bylaws and your auditors set the rules, and many organizations simply keep board minutes permanently.
Practical tips for the secretary
- Sit where you can see the chair and hear everyone clearly.
- Keep a printed member list to mark attendance, late arrivals and departures.
- Ask the chair to restate each motion before the vote, and read it back if you are unsure.
- Record the time the meeting is called to order and adjourned.
- Draft the minutes within a few days and send them to the chair before anyone else.
Can AI take meeting minutes?
Yes, for online meetings, with a person in the loop. An AI notetaker is software that joins a video call as a participant, records it, transcribes it with speaker labels and turns the transcript into a summary and action items. Demand for this is not in doubt: in the same Microsoft survey, 80% of people said they wanted AI to help summarize their meetings and action items.
What AI does well is completeness and speed. You get a full transcript, so nothing is lost; a first-draft summary shortly after the call; a list of extracted tasks; and a record you can search later. It also frees the person who would have been writing to take full part in the meeting.
What it does not do is judgment. It cannot reliably tell a decision from a suggestion, it does not know your quorum rules or motion conventions, it can mishear names, numbers and jargon, and the participant-bot kind needs an online meeting to join, so it captures nothing in a meeting room or on a phone line.
There are two broad options. Platform assistants are built into the video tool. Google Meet's Take notes for me feature, for example, saves notes to a Google Doc in the organizer's Drive, needs an eligible Workspace edition or Google AI plan, and works only in a listed set of spoken languages. Zoom and Microsoft Teams offer their own equivalents. Separate notetakers work across platforms and usually do more with the transcript, such as follow-up drafts and CRM updates. Our comparison of the best AI meeting notetakers and the AI meeting notetaker guide go deeper on choosing one.
Manual minute-taker vs AI notetaker
| Question | Manual minute-taker | AI notetaker |
|---|---|---|
| Works for in-person and phone meetings | Yes | Not the bots that join video calls |
| Minute-taker can take full part in the meeting | No | Yes |
| Captures exact wording | Only what they write down or read back | In the transcript, but you must find and verify it |
| Judges what counted as a decision | Yes, with context and the chair's help | Proposes a draft; a person must confirm it |
| Knows formal conventions such as quorum and motions | A trained secretary does | Not built in; add them yourself |
| Time from meeting end to first draft | Hours to a day, depending on the writer | Usually shortly after the call ends |
| Searchable record later | Only what was written down | Full transcript plus summary |
| Recording consent | Rarely needed, since nothing is recorded | Often needed; depends on jurisdiction and policy |
| Sensitive remarks | Can be left out at the source | Recorded; must be removed from what you send |
| Cost | Staff time | Software subscription or usage fees |
Many teams end up with a hybrid: the AI captures everything, and a person spends a few minutes turning its draft into minutes using a template like the ones above.
How do you review AI-generated minutes before sending them?
Treat AI output as a first draft from a fast, literal assistant who did not notice the politics in the room. Before anything goes out:
- Check every decision against the transcript. Use the timestamps to jump to the moment it was said. A summary can turn "we could try November 10" into "agreed to launch November 10."
- Check names, numbers and dates. Prices, quantities, deadlines and the spelling of people and companies are where an error costs the most.
- Check the owners. An AI can assign a task to whoever mentioned it rather than whoever accepted it. Turn relative dates such as "next Friday" into actual dates.
- Remove what should not travel. Personal information, internal pricing strategy, offhand remarks and anything said as "off the record" do not belong in minutes sent to a wider group. Internal analysis, such as a sentiment read or a coaching score, is for you, not the attendees.
- Confirm consent was handled. If anyone objected to recording, or joined late and missed the notice, deal with that before circulating anything drawn from the recording.
- Reformat into your template. AI summaries are not laid out as minutes. Add attendance, and for formal meetings add quorum, the exact wording and result of each motion, and the approval block.
- Choose the audience. Send the minutes, not the full transcript, unless everyone agreed it could be shared.
- Label formal minutes as a draft until the body has approved them.
How does PepoSmart's AI notetaker produce summaries and action items?
PepoSmart is an AI scheduling and meeting-intelligence platform: booking pages and availability rules on one side, an AI notetaker on the other. For minutes, the notetaker is the part that matters. Here is how to set it up and turn its output into minutes.
- Connect your video platform. PepoSmart creates meeting links for Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams when someone books.
- Switch on AI meeting notes on the event. Every booking of that event with a supported online meeting location then gets the notetaker, as long as the account has an included recording or a purchased credit left.
- Let it join, and say so. The notetaker joins as a visible participant, so everyone on the call can see it. Mention it at the start anyway; obtaining any consent your jurisdiction or organization requires is the host's responsibility.
- Open the meeting page after the call. It holds the recording, a speaker-labeled transcript, a structured summary with a timestamped view, and action items with an owner and a priority. The AI meeting notes page shows the full set of outputs.
- Review, then paste into your template. Run the checklist above, then move the summary into your updates section and the action items into your action list. For client meetings, the follow-up email draft gives you a recap to edit and send.
- Find decisions later. Chat with meetings answers questions across your recorded meetings, such as "When did we agree to move the launch date?"
- Push actions to your CRM if you sell. On Professional and above, approved action items can become follow-up tasks in HubSpot, Salesforce and the other supported CRMs, as described in our guide to syncing meeting notes to your CRM.
If someone removes the notetaker from the call by mistake, you can invite it back with Rejoin notetaker, and the parts are stitched into one transcript.
The same analysis also includes a sentiment and buyer-intent read and a coaching scorecard. Those are useful for you and your manager, and they are exactly the kind of internal material that should stay out of minutes you send to attendees.
Plans and limits. AI meeting notes are available on Starter and above. Every plan, including Free, includes 2 AI recordings for the lifetime of the account, so you can try the notetaker on real meetings before paying. There is no monthly allowance and no unlimited tier: beyond those 2, paid plans add recordings with credit packs of 10 for $19, 20 for $27 or 40 for $39, shared across the team and valid for 30 days. On Free, recordings are deleted after 7 days; on paid plans they are kept with no scheduled expiry and can be deleted at any time. The product facts page lists the current details.
What PepoSmart does not do, and when another approach is better
An AI notetaker is the right tool for some minutes and the wrong one for others. Be clear about which before you rely on it.
- It cannot record in-person or phone meetings. The notetaker joins Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams calls as a participant. A board that meets around a table, or a call on a dial-in line, needs a human minute-taker.
- It does not write formal minutes. It does not track quorum, record who moved a motion or mark minutes as approved. The secretary adds those, using the board template above.
- It is built around booked meetings. The notetaker joins meetings booked through a PepoSmart event that has AI notes switched on. If your recurring internal meetings live only in your calendar and you just want notes, a platform assistant such as Google Meet's may be simpler.
- It is always visible. There is no hidden recording mode, and consent remains the host's responsibility.
- Recording can fail. The bot can be denied entry from a waiting room, the link can change, or there may be no usable audio. Failed recordings do not use your allowance. Transcription quality also varies with audio quality, accents, crosstalk and language.
- Transcripts are processed by third-party large-language-model providers to produce summaries, action items and drafts. If a meeting covers material that must not leave your organization, check that against your policies, or minute that session by hand.
We also do not publish an accuracy percentage or a "time saved" figure for AI minutes. A defensible number would need a study with a defined sample and method, and we have not run one. Review every draft before it goes out.
Summary
Good meeting minutes record what was done, not what was said: who attended, each decision in one clear sentence, and action items with one owner and a real date. Prepare a template from the agenda, confirm unclear points with the chair rather than guessing, and send team and client minutes within a day, while formal minutes stay drafts until the body approves them at the next meeting. An AI notetaker can produce the first draft for Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams calls, provided a person reviews it before it is sent. To try that on your own meetings, create a free PepoSmart account: every plan includes 2 AI recordings for the life of the account, and ongoing AI meeting notes start on Starter, as set out on the pricing page.
