Video Summary
How do I write corporate minutes? Well first let’s talk about what we mean by corporate minutes. Each year, at least once a year, you need to have a shareholders meeting and under your bylaws of your corporation you have to give notice to the shareholders that you’re holding a meeting. What you customarily do is simply have a waiver signed particularly whenever let’s say one or two shareholder corporation and they simply waive notice of the meeting. The shareholders then primary function is to elect the directors and so you write up the minutes giving the date, time and place the meeting took place, who was present and how many shares of stock that each of the shareholders held and hopefully if they were present or not so that you have a quorum and you further go on down in the minutes and say that the shareholders conducted an election and elected so and so, which is usually themselves, as the directors of the corporation. And then you have the secretary sign off on the minutes and put those in the corporate record book with the waiver of the notice of the meeting.
Then the directors usually meet immediately thereafter, if it’s a small corporation, and again, if there are just one or two directors, you have them sign a waiver of the notice of the meeting. So then the directors, their primary function are to select the officers for the upcoming year and they elect who the president, vice president, secretary, treasure is concern. Also that they may approve any major purchases that the president or someone has done during the past year, possibly approve salaries; contributions to 401K’s, compensation, bonuses, and things such as this would then go in the director’s meeting for the various officers. And then again, you have the Chairman of the Board sign the minutes as well as the secretary for the corporation and then insert the waiver of the meeting and the minutes.
We, at my office, send out a questionnaire and a notice that these minutes need to be done. Each year we try to send it out the first part of the year and ask for the information and then we prepare these in duplicate; the shareholders minutes and the director’s minutes. Once we have them prepared in duplicate, we send them back out to be signed with one copy going in our file for the corporation, the other going in the corporate record book.
I believe we charge $250 for the preparation of the minutes each year. We also remind you that you must file with the Secretary of State each year and right now the fee is $150 must be paid before May 1st, 2000, well its May 1st of each year.
It is also very critical that you have shareholder meetings and director’s minutes if you want to enjoy the protection of not being liable for the corporate debts. Because if you’re going to be a corporation, you need to act like a corporation and have your annual meeting of shareholders, elect directors, the directors need to elect the officers and then whenever you are sued and they attempt to pierce the corporate veil, then you have the corporate minutes to show that these are corporate debts and the shareholders will not be personally liable for the corporation debts.
So if you have any questions about your corporate minutes, give me a call at (727) 847-2288. Thank you.