Tuesday, December 31, 2013

A Review Of The Content And Importance Of Minute Books

By Harriett Crosby


Minute books are a permanent record or document that contains the resolutions passed by a company at its meeting and the deliberations that followed such resolutions. Every company is by law required to keep a record of all business of the corporation. One important feature that characterizes such documents is that they have to be maintained in an up-to-date fashion.

Records of this nature discussed here are normally kept for use by the institution itself. They could also be accessed by stakeholders of each firm for a number of reasons. The bottom line is to ensure that all information pertaining to an establishment is open to all interested parties. This is the only way to ensure transparency and accountability.

A summary of all the documents that usually consist such items are the articles of association of the company, the memorandum of association, information on the shareholders of every firm and even the tax filings of any given company. Legal documents that may include the by-laws or internal regulations of an organization would also normally be put in such binders. Information on the assets of a particular body would also form part of such volumes.

Although the law requires that all corporate associations maintain such company records, this is not the only reason why these should be maintained. The maintenance of such documents greatly eases the management of each organization. This is because any time the company needs to make references; such documents would be easily accessible and available.

Having the above materials at hand would also be important in instances where the company is undergoing a merger. In such cases all records that consists the entire history of this organization would have to come under scrutiny. The process of merging corporations could be quite complicated, especially in circumstances where the firm had been undergoing a financial crisis.

Sale transactions involving businesses on the verge of collapse for example would also demand the availability of information. All data that form the existence of a firm would have to be scrutinized carefully for a number of reasons. For example, this could help in the assessment of all the value of each organization and even in formalizing sale agreements and contracts.

The period of time that a particular officer of a corporation would spend in combining and keeping safely the documents of all the organizations would usually depend on the size of every firm. Under normal circumstances, larger organizations would require more time to assemble and maintain such important document. In some cases, large firms have had to employ staff to handle such matters.

Another important to keep in mind about the proper maintenance of any company minute books is that such items should never leave the premises of every organization. The information contained in such documents is usually very confidential, essential to the organization in question. To this effect, it would be highly inappropriate for any staff of the organization to go home, for example, with such confidential reports. Information is very sensitive.




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