Decision Log Template: Record What the Meeting Decided

"Didn't we already decide this?"

Marta runs operations for a 40-person office. Six weeks after the team moved the weekly supplier call to Thursdays, someone booked it back on Monday. Nobody could say who had agreed, or why.

The minutes said "supplier call discussed." Twenty minutes of the next meeting went to deciding it again. (Marta is a composite, not a real person.)

The problem isn't your team's memory. Decisions get made out loud, then scatter across minutes, chat threads and people's heads. A decision log keeps them in one place.

This guide gives you a copy-ready decision log template with nine fields, a filled-in example from one quarter, a test for what counts as a decision, and a 30-second routine to catch each one before people leave the room.

Want the log to fill itself? Try ParrotNotes free: record the meeting on your phone and pull the decisions from the summary afterwards.

What is a decision log?

A decision log is a running record of the decisions a team makes: what was decided, why, by whom, on what date, and whether the decision still stands. It lives across meetings, not inside one, so anyone can check what was agreed months later.

It's easy to confuse with two documents you probably keep already. Here's how they differ:

Minutes bury decisions in a date-ordered file. Action items close when the task is done. The decision log is the one you search by topic a year later.

If you keep formal minutes, our meeting minutes template covers that record; the log sits alongside it.

The decision log template (copy this)

Paste this into a spreadsheet, a shared doc or your project tool. One row per decision.

Prefer a plain-text version for a doc or a notes app? Use this block for each entry:

D-[number] | [date] | [meeting]
Decision: We will [one sentence].
Why: [the reason, in one or two lines]
Options considered: [what else was on the table]
Decided by: [person or group]
Door: One-way / Two-way
Review date: [date, or "none"]
Status: Active / Superseded by D-[number] / Reversed
Linked actions: [action item numbers]

What each field is for

• Number. A short ID like D-14, so minutes and action items can point to it.
• Date. When the decision was made, not when it was logged.
• Decision. One sentence starting "We will." If you can't write it that way, nothing was decided yet.
• Why. The reason matters more than the decision. It's what stops the team reopening it.
• Options considered. What you said no to. It saves the next person from proposing it again.
• Decided by. A name or a group ("leadership team"), so people know who can change it.
• Door. Jeff Bezos described decisions as one-way or two-way doors in Amazon's 2015 letter to shareholders: one-way doors are "consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible," while most decisions are "changeable, reversible." Mark which kind it is, so the team knows how carefully to revisit it.
• Review date. When to check the decision still makes sense. Two-way doors can have a short one.
• Status. Active, Superseded (and by which entry) or Reversed. Never delete an old decision; mark it.

The fields borrow from software teams' architecture decision records. Michael Nygard's 2011 format uses title, context, decision, status and consequences, and a status can read "superseded." This decision log template fits that idea on one row, for meetings instead of code.

A decision log example: five decisions from one quarter

Here's Marta's team log for one quarter, filled in (composite example):

When the Monday booking came up again, Marta sent one line: "See D-11, supplier call is Thursdays because two suppliers can't do Mondays." The meeting moved on in under a minute.

Notice D-13 and D-15. The pilot wasn't deleted when the team made it permanent; it was marked superseded, so the history reads cleanly.

Entries also feed tasks: D-12 created three action items for the lease paperwork. Track those in an action items template and point each back to its decision number.

How to write a decision log entry

A good entry passes three checks:

1. It starts with "We will." Active, specific and future-facing.
2. Someone outside the room would understand it. No "the thing Sam raised."
3. It has a reason. A decision without a why gets reopened.

Most meetings don't produce clean sentences, though. Use this test to sort what you hear:

Rewrite bank: six vague phrases into decision log entries

"Let's try it and see" is a real decision, a two-way door. Give it a review date or it quietly becomes permanent.

Catch decisions in the room: the 30-second read-back

Decisions go missing in the last five minutes, when people are standing up. Make a read-back the final agenda item. If you plan decision meetings, the decision meeting format in our meeting agenda template already ends this way.

Say this out loud:

"Before we go, here's what we decided. One: we will [decision], because [reason]. Two: we will [decision]. Is anything missing, and does anyone read these differently?"

It takes about 30 seconds per decision, and the closing question matters most.

Kofi, a team lead in a regional finance office (a composite), found the read-back turned up a disagreement about once a month: two people had heard two different budget limits. Catching that in the room took a minute. Catching it after the invoices came in would have taken weeks.

Keep the decision log alive

A log only works if people trust it. Four habits keep it that way:

One log per team or project, not one per meeting. Put it where everyone already works: a shared drive, your project tool or a pinned doc.

Log within the hour. Add entries straight after the meeting, while the reason is still clear, and link the log in the minutes.

Supersede, don't edit. When a decision changes, add a new entry and mark the old one "Superseded by D-[number]." The trail of why things changed is part of the value.

Check review dates monthly. A two-minute scan catches trials that were meant to end. If your team is rethinking how often it meets at all, our guide to meeting cadence shows where a monthly review fits.

Let a recording fill in the decision log template

The hard part of a decision log isn't the template. It's noticing the decision while you're also running the meeting.

ParrotNotes does the noticing for you. Record the meeting on the phone you already carry, with no meeting bot joining anything. You get a full transcript, an AI summary, key points and action items.

Then open the chat for that recording and ask, "What did we decide, and why?" You get a draft of each entry: the decision, the reason and who agreed. Paste them into your log in minutes.

The transcript keeps the exact words, so the "why" field stops being a guess. Recording works offline; transcription and AI run once you're connected.

The free plan includes 100 minutes of recording a month, an AI summary on every recording and 5 AI-powered recordings a month. Download ParrotNotes free and record your next decision meeting.

On Pro (US$19.99 a month, or US$14.99 a month billed annually) you get 3,000 minutes a month, all AI features on every recording, speaker identification to see who said what, and AI semantic search across your notes, so "when did we decide on the lease?" finds the meeting. For formal minutes, the free meeting minutes generator turns pasted notes into a draft.

Start your decision log at the next meeting

A decision log template is simple. The habit around it is what saves you from re-deciding the same things:

• Copy the nine fields and start with one row per decision.
• Write every entry as "We will..." with a reason.
• Read decisions back in the last minutes of the meeting.
• Supersede old entries instead of editing them, and check review dates monthly.

Marta's team now spends those twenty minutes on new business, because the old business is written down. Start your log at your next meeting, and let a recording catch what you'd miss. Try ParrotNotes free.