How to take strata meeting minutes
A practical guide for the volunteer holding the pen: what to capture in the room, what to leave out, and how to get the finished minutes to owners on time.
Nobody joins a strata council because they love writing minutes. But in British Columbia the minutes are a legal record the corporation must keep, so someone has to hold the pen. This guide is written for that person. It assumes no training, no shorthand, and no desire to spend the evening after the meeting formatting a document.
Before the meeting: set yourself up
Start from the agenda. The agenda is the skeleton of your minutes. If you have it in advance, write your notes directly under each agenda heading and half the structure is already done.
Have the last minutes handy. The first items of most meetings are approving the agenda and the previous minutes, and "business arising" refers back to them constantly.
Prepare an attendance line. List the council members expected, then mark present or regrets as people arrive. Note anyone else in the room: the property manager, a contractor, owners attending as observers or for a hearing.
During the meeting: capture five things
You do not need to write quickly. You need to reliably capture five things:
1. The frame. Date, time called to order, location or video platform, who chaired, who attended. Thirty seconds of writing, usually before the meeting even starts.
2. Every motion, word for word. When someone says "I move that...", slow the room down and get the exact wording, the mover, the seconder, and the result. Do not be shy about asking the chair to repeat a motion. Every experienced secretary does this, and it protects the council: under section 35 of the Strata Property Act, the results of votes are the one thing the minutes absolutely must contain.
3. Decisions made without a formal motion. Small operational decisions often happen by consensus ("fine, we'll get two more quotes"). Write these down as decisions or action items. If it matters, better still: ask the chair to put it as a motion.
4. Action items. Who agreed to do what, by when. This list is what makes the next meeting shorter.
5. The numbers. Account balances, quotes, arrears, levy amounts. Ask the treasurer to give figures slowly or hand you the page.
Point form is fine. Abbreviations are fine. Nobody will ever see these notes but you, and if you use a service like ours, the rougher version is honestly what we expect to receive.
What to leave out
Minutes record what the council decided, not what everyone said. Leaving things out is not sloppy; it is the professional standard, and it keeps the strata out of trouble.
Leave out the debate. "Council discussed the landscaping contract" is enough. A blow-by-blow of who disagreed with whom is unnecessary, frequently inaccurate, and reads badly years later.
Be careful with names. Owners in arrears, bylaw complaints, and disputes should be handled with discretion. A common practice is to identify units or files rather than people where the context allows, and to keep sensitive personal details out of minutes that will be circulated to every owner and future buyer. Remember that minutes are distributed widely and kept for years.
Leave out accusations. If a heated statement about a person was made in the meeting, the minutes gain nothing by preserving it. Record the decision the council reached instead.
Leave out hearings' private details. Record that a hearing was held and any decision made. The evidence and argument usually do not belong in circulated minutes.
After the meeting: the two-week clock is running
Under Standard Bylaw 19, council must inform owners of the minutes within two weeks of the meeting, whether or not they have been approved. So the real work begins when the meeting ends: turning your notes into a document owners can read.
Write the minutes while the meeting is fresh, ideally within a day or two. Follow a consistent structure (our free BC minutes template gives you one), mark the document as a draft until council approves it at the next meeting, distribute it to owners, and file a copy where the strata keeps its records. Minutes must be kept at least six years under the Strata Property Regulation; keeping them forever is better. For the full set of legal requirements, see what BC law requires of strata minutes.
The shortcut
Everything above still applies if you use StrataMinutes, except the part where you spend your evening writing. Send us the rough notes you took in the room, or photos of handwritten pages, or a recording of the meeting. You receive back complete, professionally formatted minutes with every motion recorded, a compliance checklist against the Strata Property Act's record-keeping requirements, and an editable Word copy, usually within minutes. You review, adjust if needed, and send to owners well inside the two-week window. See a complete sample of the finished product.
Take the notes. Skip the write-up.
Your first council meeting is free, no credit card required. See what your rough notes turn into.
This page is general information for BC strata councils, not legal advice. Always check your strata's own bylaws.
Related guides
A strata minutes template for BC
What BC law requires of strata minutes
AGM and SGM minutes in BC
A complete sample of finished strata minutes