Maintaining the minute book: Best practices in corporate record keeping
Forskriftssamsvarjuli 26, 2023

Maintaining the minute book: Best practices in corporate record keeping

A familiar sight in any office is that bookcase filled with minute books. It is a monument to how most companies have managed their corporate record keeping for years. But in today’s virtual working environment, many companies are reviewing how they track their information and update physical books they may not easily have access to.

Let’s look at standards in record keeping and maintaining minute books, and how the shift to virtual recordkeeping is evolving and presenting a better approach.

What sets the standards for corporate recordkeeping?

The Model Corporation Act (Chapters 16.01 and 16.02) outlines the basics of corporate recordkeeping. It addresses two categories: what records to keep and when and how records can be inspected. 

Many states have fully adopted the Model Corporation Act while others have only partially adopted it. In some cases, states have written their own corporate statutes to include additional recommendations for tracking. These state statutes can be found in CT Advantage under the “Business Entity Resources” category (under “Law Summaries”). This is a quick way to reference your local statute as needed.

Other professional organizations may also suggest best practices for how long to retain corporate records. CT Corporation has compiled a sample listing below. As you can see, not all corporate documentation is required to be kept permanently.

What documents make up a minute book?

A minute book is comprised of a variety of documents. Anything that is driven by the entity should be captured in the minute book.

As a best practice, the minute book should hold all historic and current information about an entity. Any changes or updates should be noted. Minute books become the “map” an entity has followed during its time functioning as an entity and may be referred to in response to a variety of inquiries.

Typically, a minute book holds information that is requested during the due diligence process whether triggered by litigation, financing, audits, historical inquiry, transactions, and so on. Maintaining these records is important. If not, legal counsel would have to revisit and replicate past events, meetings, or changes — a challenging and time-consuming task.

Here are some examples of the documents that would be included:

  • Articles/formation documents/amendments
  • Bylaws
  • Resolutions
  • Shareholder ledger/share transfers
  • Officer and Director lists with address
  • Stock certificates
  • Shareholders agreement
  • All written communications to Shareholders for the past 3 years
  • Meeting minutes
  • Annual report filings
  • Income tax returns/sales and use tax filings

As new changes occur, or meetings are held it is best to attach to your minute book physically or virtually — according to your preference. Absence of any of these records could expose the shareholders, members, or management to personal liability.

Although we don’t see the “Corporate Record Keeping Police” stopping by any offices in the U.S., certain international jurisdictions do require that minute books are kept in a specific location and ready for inspection at any time. Given this, be sure to review any international or Canadian record-keeping rules.

Secure, simplified corporate record

Every business needs to ensure their corporate records are accurate and accessible for critical business decisions. hCue eases the data burden while saving time, freeing capacity, and enabling teams to deliver additional value to the business.

What happens if a minute book is not maintained?

If evidence is uncovered that a corporate entity’s actions are not documented in historic or active record keeping, the shareholders, members, and management could lose personal liability protection – a situation referred to as “piercing the corporate veil.”

The courts have had numerous opportunities in every state to determine standards for the issue of piercing the corporate veil.  In Nevada, the Court in Truck Ins. Exch vs. Swanson 24 Nev 629(2008) weighed a number of factors. The three issues for the court were 1.) Corp influenced/governed by the person asserted to be alter ego, 2.) Unity of interest and ownership, 3.) Facts are such that maintain such separation would sanction fraud/injustice. In this matter the fact that the parties kept separate and up-to-date record books, had unique tax ID numbers, that the officers of the entities were different and had separate bank accounts were all factors that these companies were indeed separate and distinct, and no piercing of the veil was merited. 

A critical record-keeping asset, the minute book acts as the documentation that maintains the corporate separateness of an entity and its shareholders and management.

Going paperless: Virtual recordkeeping still has its challenges

Minute books have been steadily shifting to an electronic format for some time. Many companies have converted their minute books and corporate documents into PDFs and stored them in-house online. Others have stored these documents outside of their organization possibly in a cloud based system, still making them readily available. Companies that have not acted to identify, locate and organize their corporate minute books are still struggling to capture all documents accurately.

Since the advent of the pandemic, access to documentation stored onsite had become increasingly challenging, which lead many organizations to begin looking at different options and services in which to store and access these documents. This helped to elevate the problem of documentation stored on shared servers needing access rights per user.

How did companies meet the challenge of conducting Board business during the pandemic?

As millions of Americans continue to manage Work from home via virtual meetings to communicate and stay productive, in many jurisdictions, regularly scheduled in-person Board, Shareholder and Committee meetings and annual shareholder meetings are slowly coming back in some organizations replacing those virtual substitutes. These meetings are part of the record-keeping documentation and often are approving, amending, and/or discussing topics that should be captured in the minute book. Some states, like Delaware, have long had provisions for remote meetings. Others have taken steps to allow them such as amending their corporate code (NY, CA, NJ, and TX) or have issuing gubernatorial Executive Orders.

Where permitted, transfer agents and financial solution providers can assist companies in setting up secure virtual meeting environments.

Every state may be in a different stage of the process to return to normal activities and routines and it is best to check with your local State government for any updated Executive orders. 

How hCue can help with corporate record keeping

To address the challenges of managing and accessing key legal documentation, many of our hCue subscribers are managing their minute books in their hCue platform. If you aren’t currently using the Documents section of hCue here is how some of our current subscribers are using it.

hCue allows you to easily upload new documents, resolutions, and transactions into a virtual minute book that can be made available to anyone who needs access. The hCue calendar can also be set up to incorporate meeting reminders, attendee tracking, and fee schedules. Plus, board materials can be delivered seamlessly via the Doc Portal.

hCue’s security features, such as role-based security and optional single sign-on, streamline, and help you maintain stricter control over system and document access.

hCue can also be used to generate reports and documents that support the “Inspection of the Minute Book” process. Lists of shareholders, ownership, transactions, addresses, and certificates can be managed in hCue and exported into a report upon request.

Find out more

Although you may not be using it now, please feel free to reach out to your hCue Business Consultant with any questions or to discuss some of the best practices we have seen other customers utilize.

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Sharon Carroll
Compliance Business Consultant
Sharon Carroll is a Compliance Business Consultant with CT Corporation.