Meeting types · Committee meeting
Committee meeting minutes, without the note-taker.
Committee minutes are read by people who were not there and are often the only public account of how a decision was reached.
Committees — school governing bodies, council committees, trustee boards, professional panels, residents' associations — run on procedure, and their minutes are procedural documents. What matters is the motion as put, the amendment as moved, the result of the vote, the interests declared, and the actions assigned. Whether the debate was interesting is beside the point. A minute that captures a lively discussion but not the wording of the motion has failed at the only job it had.
The honorary secretary writing them is almost always a volunteer with a day job, taking minutes on a Tuesday evening while also participating in the discussion. Minutes then get drafted at the weekend, circulated late, and corrected at the following meeting — which consumes the first fifteen minutes of every meeting in a slow argument about what happened at the last one.
Recording the meeting collapses that cycle. GetNotes transcribes it with speaker labels and drafts minutes with the decisions and the actions and their owners, so the secretary edits within a day rather than reconstructing a week later. Motions can be checked against the audio rather than against a recollection, which is what usually causes the corrections in the first place.
Public-body committees have their own rules on recording, publication and access, and some sessions are held in confidence for good reason. Check your terms of reference and your standing orders before you record, and be clear with members about whether the audio itself is part of the record or purely a drafting aid. Members are entitled to know they are being recorded and what happens to that audio once the minutes are approved.
Where it earns its keep
Fifteen minutes correcting the last minutes
Every meeting opens with a slow negotiation over whether the previous minutes are accurate, because they were written from memory nine days later. Drafting from a recording within a day removes most of that argument before it starts.
The secretary who is also a member
The person minuting has a view on the motion and a right to vote on it. They cannot do justice to both roles at once, so either the record or their contribution suffers — usually the record.
A decision questioned months later
A parent, resident or member asks how a decision was reached and who supported it. Minutes that record the motion, the vote and the declared interests answer the question. Minutes that say 'the committee discussed and agreed' invite a complaint.
How GetNotes works
- Record or upload. Hit record on your phone or laptop in the room — or drop in an audio file you already have. No bot joins anything.
- It writes it down. Every word transcribed, every speaker labelled, in 90+ languages including ones that switch mid-sentence.
- Share the minutes.Summary, decisions, and action items with owners — ready before everyone's back at their desk.
Questions, answered
Can we record a committee meeting of a public body?
That depends on your standing orders and the rules governing your body, not on GetNotes. Some committees permit recording as a drafting aid, some publish recordings, and some prohibit it for confidential items. Check your terms of reference, tell members before you start, and stop the recording for any item taken in confidence.
Will GetNotes format minutes to our committee's house style?
No. GetNotes produces a structured draft — summary, decisions, action items with owners — and the secretary maps that into your standard template with its numbering, motion conventions and formal preamble. What disappears is the recall work; the drafting conventions your committee has used for twenty years stay with the person who knows them.
How do we record members attending remotely?
GetNotes records the room, so a hybrid meeting works best when remote members come through a speakerphone or the room's audio system, which the recording device then picks up along with everyone present. It does not join video calls as a bot — for a fully online committee you would record the room's playback or upload a recording made by the conferencing tool.
Do we keep the audio after the minutes are approved?
Most committees treat the recording as a drafting aid and delete it once minutes are approved, since the approved minutes are the official record and retaining audio creates access and disclosure obligations. Deleting a meeting in GetNotes permanently removes the audio and the transcript, so that policy is straightforward to actually carry out.
Other meeting types
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