For consultants after every client meeting
Meeting Minutes Generator From a Transcript
Paste the transcript or drop the file. Get meeting minutes with every decision sourced, no owner or date guessed, and a client follow-up email.
Free to start. No card needed.
How to write meeting minutes by hand
Start with what a reader needs months later: the meeting's name, the date, who attended and who was absent. Then record outcomes, not the conversation. The Robert's Rules of Order FAQ1 calls minutes "a record of what was done at a meeting, not a record of what was said." Give each decision one sentence and the name of whoever made it. If the room only leaned one way, say so, because "leaning toward July" and "go-live moves to July" are different promises.
Write each action as one task starting with a verb, with one named owner and a due date. Name a person, not a team, because "the client team" usually means nobody. For board minutes, the Chartered Governance Institute UK & Ireland asks for each action's owner and its completion date "where a deadline has been agreed."2 When no date was agreed, or nobody took the task on, write [date to confirm] or [owner to confirm] instead of guessing. Better still, ask before everyone leaves: "Who's taking that, and by when?"
Before you send, check each name, number and date that matters against the recording, because automatic transcripts can mishear them or give a line to the wrong speaker. Send the minutes within a day as a short email (decisions first, then actions, then open questions) and ask for corrections by a set date. Log new risks in your RAID log, and keep each decision's wording identical in the next weekly status report. For a form to fill in, the meeting minutes template has these parts and a filled example.
How it works
What should meeting minutes include?
Meeting minutes should include the meeting's name, date and attendees, each decision and who made it, each action with an owner and due date, and what is still open. River writes all of that from your transcript or notes, plus a short follow-up email for the client. Minutes of an hour-long meeting fit on one or two pages. Every decision carries the words that settled it, or the timestamp where they were said, so you can check each one before the client reads it.
The hard part is attribution: who decided, who took on a task, and by when. River names an owner or a due date only when someone said it in the meeting. Otherwise the row reads [owner to confirm] or [date to confirm], and the gap goes on a short list to settle with the client. Each decision is credited to whoever made or confirmed it, never to someone who only suggested it, and anything tentative waits under Not yet decided.
Use it after any client meeting: a weekly check-in, a workshop, a steering committee or a scoping call. Paste the transcript or your notes, or drop up to 10 files; separate meetings get separate minutes, in date order. When the minutes are done, River can write a note to each action owner or start this week's client status report from them. For a round of stakeholder interviews, interview synthesis counts themes across conversations instead of listing actions.
How it works
From transcript to minutes
Paste or drop
Paste the transcript or your notes, or drop up to 10 Word, PDF or text files.
River reads it all
It reads the whole meeting before writing, noting who decided what and who took on each task.
Get your minutes
Decisions, actions, open questions and a client email land in one doc, each decision tied to its source.
Send and follow up
Settle the placeholders, send the email, then chase open actions or roll them into your status report.
| Action | Owner | Due |
|---|---|---|
| Send last quarter’s store sales | Raj (client) | Fri 15 May |
| Revise the phase 2 plan | Tom | [date to confirm] |
| Book the store visits | [owner to confirm] | Before the next call |
| Share the draft staff survey | Ana | Wed 20 May |
Not yet decided: moving go-live to July. “We’ll probably push it, but let me check with finance.” Dana, 31:05
What you'll get
Decisions, actions with owners and a client email from your transcript
- Decisions made, each with the line or timestamp that shows it
- Action items with an owner and due date, only where someone said them
- A short follow-up email to the client, ready to check and send
Before and after
Your transcript in. Minutes you can send.
A 45-minute Teams transcript of a weekly call with a retail client: five speakers, timestamps, a debate about the go-live date, and three people promising to “look into it”.
Decisions 1. Phase 2 starts with the northern stores. Confirmed by Dana, client sponsor: “North first, that’s settled.” 12:40 Action items 1. Send last quarter’s store sales · Raj (client) · Friday 15 May 2. Revise the phase 2 plan · Tom · [date to confirm] 3. Book the store visits · [owner to confirm] · before the next call Not yet decided Moving go-live to July. Dana: “We’ll probably push it, but let me check with finance.” 31:05 Follow-up email Subject: Weekly call, 14 May: decisions and next steps Hi Dana, thanks for today. We agreed to start phase 2 with the northern stores…
Owners and dates appear only when someone said them, so nobody gets an action they never agreed to.
What lands in your doc
What's in your meeting minutes
- Meeting title, date and attendees exactly as stated, with any gaps marked for you to confirm
- Each decision in one sentence, with who made it and the quote or timestamp behind it
- An action items table with owners and due dates only where someone actually said them
- Tentative items kept under Not yet decided, plus open questions and topics parked for later
- What to confirm with the client: conflicting names or figures, and actions missing an owner or date
- A short client email recapping the decisions and actions, and asking who will take any unowned ones
Questions consultants ask
Common questions
What's the difference between meeting minutes and a meeting summary?
Minutes record what a meeting decided and who agreed to do what by when, while a summary retells what was discussed. A summary helps someone catch up; minutes are the record both sides check when memories differ. River's minutes point each decision to a quote or timestamp, flag any owner or date nobody gave, and keep tentative items apart.
How do I write meeting minutes with River?
Paste the transcript or your notes into the box at the top of this page, or drop the file, then choose Write my minutes. River reads the whole meeting and writes the minutes and a follow-up email into your free River workspace. Settle any gaps marked to confirm, edit anything you like, and send the email yourself.
Can it write minutes from a Zoom, Teams or Google Meet transcript?
Yes. By default, Teams lets organizers and co-organizers download the transcript3 as a Word file, which you can drop straight in. Zoom saves a cloud recording's transcript as a .vtt file4, so open it in a text editor and paste the text. Google Meet, Otter and Granola transcripts work too, as do notes you typed. Speaker names and timestamps let each decision point to its exact moment.
What if nobody said who owns an action?
Then the minutes say so. The owner reads [owner to confirm], a missing due date reads [date to confirm], and the follow-up email asks the client who will take the action. River doesn't fill in the most likely person, because an action pinned on someone who never agreed to it causes more trouble than an honest gap.
How does it tell a decision from an idea?
A decision is something the room agreed, or that the person with the authority settled, such as "North first, that's settled." Words like "probably", "let's aim for" or "subject to finance" don't make a decision. Those items go under Not yet decided, with who said them and what they wait on, so the follow-up email doesn't present them as agreed.
Is the meeting I paste kept private?
Your transcript is saved in your own River workspace, private to you unless you share it. To write the minutes, River sends it to the AI provider doing the work. River's privacy policy says neither River nor its AI providers train models on your content. Check your client agreement for any rules on where meeting records may be kept.
Is the meeting minutes generator free?
Yes, it is free to start, with no card needed. Your minutes open in a River workspace, where you can edit them, share them or ask River to change them. Paid plans add more AI use and access to the most advanced models.
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