Decision log: how the board keeps track of its decisions

The board agreed to switch insurers in March. In September someone asks whether it happened. The answer is in the minutes somewhere, along with fifty other decisions, and nobody is quite sure which ones were carried out. A decision log solves that with very little effort.

What a board decision log is for

The log answers the question the minutes can’t answer quickly: what has the board decided, and what has happened since? Some boards call it a decision register. Project teams keep decision logs too, but this guide is about the board’s.

The minutes record the decisions taken at meetings, and a decision taken between meetings has its own written record. Once approved, the minutes are the primary record, and any correction is made openly rather than by changing the history. A decision taken in March sits in March’s minutes, whatever has happened to it since. The log brings the decisions together and is where the status changes: open, in progress, closed.

The chair uses it to see what’s slipping before the next meeting. Members use it to check that what they voted for got done. A new board member can read it to see what the board has been deciding, without going through a year of minutes.

What to record

A decision log can be as simple as a table. Each row is a decision, and the columns are:

• decision, worded as in the minutes
• date and a reference to the minutes or written record
• owner, if the decision needs carrying out
• due date, if there is one
• status: open, in progress or closed
• next follow-up
• date closed

Copy each decision exactly from the record, and put the follow-up in its own fields: what is to be done, by whom and by when. A decision with no follow-up, such as approving the annual accounts, can be closed as soon as it’s taken and minuted. An approval that sets something in motion, such as a contract to sign, needs follow-up like any other. A decision that needs doing but has no owner or date is much harder to follow up.

Our decision log template sets this out as a Word document, with open and closed decisions in separate tables.

A routine that keeps the log current

The log is only useful if it’s up to date. A simple routine works for most boards.

1. After a decision. The person who keeps the log adds it from the draft minutes or the written record, and checks the wording once that record is approved.
2. Before the next meeting. They ask each owner for a status update and mark what’s done.
3. At the meeting. The board goes through the open decisions that need its attention. It spends the time on the exceptions: decisions past their due date, obstacles that need a new decision and decisions that can be closed.

Put the log in the board pack under matters arising, and nobody has to collect updates in the meeting.

Common mistakes

Boards that try a decision log and give up tend to hit the same problems.

• The log isn’t updated, so the minutes become the only place to look.
• The board collects status updates in the meeting that it could have had beforehand.
• Several versions of the list live with different people.
• Closed decisions stay marked as open until nobody trusts the log.

These are all forms of what we call board debt: cheap to live with day to day, expensive on the day someone needs a straight answer.

How Hippoly helps

In Hippoly you record the follow-up from a decision as actions, from the action list or straight from the meeting page. You can give each one an owner and a due date. Hippoly reminds the owner when the action is assigned, on the due date and when it’s overdue, and the board sees what’s open and what’s done in one list.

The minutes sit in the same workspace. Once an admin has turned on content access, hi, Hippoly’s AI assistant, can search the minutes for earlier decisions. Book a demo to see it.

This is general guidance, not legal advice.