What are meeting minutes?
Meeting minutes are the approved formal record of a meeting: who attended, what was proposed, what was decided, and how each vote went. A named minute taker writes them and the group approves them. A transcript is the full word-for-word text; notes are a participant's selective working record.
What do meeting minutes include?
The three records differ by how much of the meeting they keep and who decides what stays.
Minutes are the official record of a meeting. They list who attended, what was proposed, what was decided, and how any vote went. A named person writes them, the group approves them at the next meeting, and the approved version becomes the record. Boards, nonprofits, and public bodies keep minutes because their rules or bylaws say they have to.
A transcript is the full text of what was said. Every sentence, in order, ideally with a name against each one. Nobody edits it down. It exists so you can go back and find the exact wording later.
Notes are the working record. They are whatever the person taking them thought was worth keeping: a decision, a number to check, a line a customer said that changes the roadmap. Notes are personal, they are selective, and nobody approves them.
How transcripts, notes, and minutes relate
A transcript is the raw material. Notes are what someone picked out of it. Minutes are a separate formal document that can draw on either.
In practice, a transcript is insurance. You rarely read one end to end. You go to it when two people remember a commitment differently, or when you need a customer's exact phrasing for a case study. The value is that it is complete, not that it is readable.
The transcript says a pricing objection came up at minute 14. Your note says the objection was about the annual commitment, not the price, and that is the sentence your follow-up email needs.
Minutes are neither. They are a governance artifact with a fixed shape, and the shape is set by the body that adopts them. A transcript can help the minute taker get a motion's wording right, but a transcript is not minutes and posting one instead will not satisfy a bylaw that asks for minutes.
One meeting, three records
Take a 30-minute vendor call with three people on it.
The transcript is long. It includes the small talk, the moment the audio cut out, and the line where the vendor said the SOC 2 report would land in Q3.
The notes run to eight lines. Renewal price holds. SOC 2 in Q3, ask for the draft. Their integration lead is leaving, so support may slow down. Nothing about the weather.
The minutes, if this were a board meeting rather than a vendor call, would read differently again: attendees listed, a motion to approve the contract, the vote, and the fact that one member abstained. No color, no context, no side comments.
Confusing them is how a team ends up pasting a whole transcript into a recap email nobody reads.
Which record should you keep?
- Keep minutes when a governing document tells you to. Board meetings, committee meetings, and anything a regulator or auditor may ask to see.
- Keep a transcript when exact wording matters later: customer research, interviews, anything you will quote, or any conversation where a disagreement about what was said would be expensive.
- Keep notes for everything else, which is most meetings. The follow-up, the recap, and the answer someone needs a month from now all come out of notes.
Most people need two of the three at once: a transcript running in the background as insurance, and notes as the thing they actually use. Minutes are a separate discipline, and if your meeting needs them, someone should be assigned to write them before the meeting starts.
How Wispr Notetaker fits
Wispr Notetaker gets your words and your speakers right in both the transcript and your notes, so the recaps and follow-ups you build from them are right too. It runs on Mac, with Windows coming soon. It records on your device instead of sending a bot, so the meeting looks normal to everyone in it. Tell everyone on the call that you're recording. During the meeting you get a live transcript, with speakers shown as You and Them. After the meeting it refines that transcript and labels the speakers by name, using your calendar invite, Slack, Gmail, your dictionary, and clues in the conversation. Wispr Notetaker does not write minutes. It gives a minute taker an accurate record of who said what to work from. Try Wispr Notetaker on your next call.
Frequently asked questions
Are meeting minutes a legal requirement?
It depends on the organization. Corporate boards, nonprofits, and public bodies usually have bylaws or statutes that require minutes and set what they must contain. Ordinary team meetings almost never do. Check the governing document that applies to the meeting rather than assuming, and treat this as general information, not legal advice.
Can a transcript replace meeting minutes?
Generally no. Minutes only become the record once the group approves them at a later meeting, so an unapproved transcript has no standing even if it is more complete. Some bodies attach the transcript to the approved minutes as an appendix.
What is the difference between meeting notes and a summary?
A summary is produced after the meeting and covers the whole conversation evenly, topic by topic. Notes are selective and written in the moment. A summary is a good skim; notes are what your follow-up email is built from. Many teams keep both.
Who should take notes if everyone is in the meeting?
For most working meetings, whoever owns the follow-up. That person knows which details their next email depends on. For meetings that need minutes, assign a named minute taker before it starts. Their job in the room is to capture motions and vote counts word for word, and summarize everything else.
I already use another notetaker. Can I keep my old meeting history?
Wispr Notetaker offers one-click import from Granola. Coming from other tools, keep your old history where it lives and run both notetakers on the same meeting, then compare the transcripts and summaries before you commit to switching.
Does Wispr Notetaker keep recordings of my meetings?
Your meetings are yours. Meeting audio is encrypted and kept only temporarily to create your transcript, let you resume a meeting, verify quality, and troubleshoot. After that limited period, it's automatically removed. Wispr Notetaker doesn't create voiceprints or biometric profiles of you or anyone on your call.
