Most meeting notes answer the question “what did we talk about?” A Boule Record answers a different one: what is now owed, by whom, and by when? That difference sounds small until you try to open next week's meeting with each. Notes give you a summary to reread. A record gives you a list of things somebody has to report on.
This page shows what goes into one, and then shows a complete record from start to finish: the owner's question, what three advisors said, and what Evelyn Hart, the board's corporate secretary, wrote down at the end. The business in the sample is an illustrative composite. The format is exactly the one every session closes with.
The Five Parts of a Boule Record
Evelyn's rule is short: if it is not documented, it did not happen, and if it is not timed, it will not finish. Every record follows from that.
- Session number, date, and who was present. Session numbers matter more than they look. “Carried forward since session 4” on a session 9 record says something no amount of tact can.
- The question, in the owner's words. Not a tidy restatement. What was actually asked, with the owner's own lean attached, so that later it is possible to see whether the lean survived.
- Decisions, one per line. A decision is a sentence in the active voice that somebody could act on without asking what it meant. “We discussed pricing” is not a decision. “The quote is not sent until the per-visit labor cost is known” is.
- Action items: owner, task, due date. One name per item. Never “we”, never “the team”, never “soon”. An item without a name and a date is a wish.
- Carried forward and open tension. What was not resolved, recorded as unresolved. This is the part most owners leave out of their own notes, and it is the part that does the most work six weeks later.
What a record leaves out is just as deliberate. No transcript and no summary of every point. Opinions appear only as they bear on a decision or a disagreement. If the discussion produced nothing that anyone owes, the record says so in one line, and that line is itself a finding.
The Sample: A Quote That Needs Staff the Owner Does Not Have
A residential cleaning company: the owner plus six part-time cleaners, about $38,000 a month in revenue at roughly a 31% gross margin. The crews work 8am to 3pm. A dental office has asked for a quote to clean three evenings a week, which the owner estimates at about $2,600 a month. Separately, the owner has meant to raise residential prices since the spring and has not. Every figure here is part of the illustration, not a real company's data.
The question, as the owner typed it
A dental office wants a quote for cleaning three evenings a week, probably about $2,600 a month. My crews work days, so I'd need overtime or two new evening hires. I'm leaning yes because it's recurring and bigger than any residential client I have. Tell me what I'm missing before I send the quote Friday.
Three advisors took it. Each answer below is shortened lightly for length; none of them agreed with each other entirely.
David Chen, Financial Advisor: “Not Yet”
My answer is not yet. Get the actual delivery cost before you quote Friday. You're treating $2,600 as new profit, but it's revenue with an unresolved cost structure: an overtime premium or two new hires. Your 31% blended margin was built on day-shift labor already covered by your residential base, so it tells you nothing about what this specific job costs to deliver.
The number you can already see is that $2,600 is 6.8% of your current revenue. That's not small, but it's not so large it should be decided on excitement about recurring revenue. What decides it is the labor cost per evening visit. Take your cleaner's hourly rate, apply the 1.5x overtime premium or a new hire's fully loaded rate, multiply by the hours the job actually takes, times twelve visits a month. Subtract that, plus supplies and drive time, from $2,600. What's left is this job's contribution margin, and it needs to clear your 31% floor, not just beat zero.
Bring me that number before you send the quote: the fully loaded labor cost per evening visit, and the contribution margin it leaves.
Tyler Brooks, Startup Strategy Advisor: “Say Yes, With a Trigger”
Say yes to the dental office, but not before you answer the question you're actually avoiding: is this one account, or the first data point in a decision to become an evening commercial cleaner instead of a residential one? Those are different companies, with different hiring and different scheduling, and you're about to answer that question by accident because one number looked good.
Your instinct toward recurring work is right. The issue is that you're solving a staffing problem with enthusiasm instead of a plan. Overtime on day crews who already stop at three is not a bridge. It's a workaround that burns your people while you find out whether evening commercial is real.
So here's your trigger. If you take this account on overtime and have to lean on it more than twice in the first month to keep the shift covered, stop patching. Either hire dedicated evening staff or walk away from evening commercial entirely. Next time, I don't want to know whether you signed the dental office. I want to know whether a second and third prospect like it are already in view, because one account proves nothing about a new business line.
Chloe Bennett, Marketing & Brand Advisor: “You Haven't Said Why You”
I'd slow down before Friday. Not because recurring revenue is bad, but because “a dental office” isn't a customer profile. It's a category. Why would this office pick you over the three other crews probably quoting it this month? If the answer is “they reached out,” that's luck, not a differentiator, and luck doesn't tell me why they'd stay when a cheaper crew undercuts you next spring.
Rewrite the line you'd lead with. Not “we clean offices in the evening.” Try: “Disinfection built for patient-facing rooms, on a schedule that never touches your business hours.” That names their worry, which is infection control and liability, instead of your scheduling convenience.
And notice what else you told me. You've meant to fix residential pricing since spring and haven't. You may be reaching for a new market instead of finishing the sentence “we are worth what we charge” in the one you already have. Bring me one thing next session: what is different about cleaning a dental office compared with a house, in your own words, before I see the quote.
Where they landed differently
Tyler and Chloe both saw the same risk, a one-off job quietly turning into a new business, and drew opposite conclusions from it. Tyler's view is to take the account and let a stated trigger decide what happens next. Chloe's is that sending a repackaged residential offer to a medical client is the mistake, and that the timing looks like avoidance of the residential price question. David sided with neither. His position was that nobody at the table, the owner included, knew yet whether the job made money.
The Record Evelyn Hart Wrote
This is the whole of it. Everything above collapses into what follows, and this is the only part the next session opens with.
| Session | Session 7. Present: David Chen, Tyler Brooks, Chloe Bennett. Secretary: Evelyn Hart. |
| Question | Whether to quote a recurring evening contract (three nights a week, about $2,600 a month) that current day crews cannot staff. Owner's lean: yes. |
| Decisions | 1. The quote is not sent until the fully loaded labor cost per evening visit and the job's contribution margin are known. 2. If the job is taken, it is a single-account test, not a decision to enter commercial cleaning. 3. Reopen condition: overtime needed more than twice in the first month to cover the shift. |
| Action items | Owner — labor cost per evening visit and resulting contribution margin, against the 31% floor. Due: Friday, before the quote is sent. Owner — one paragraph: what is different about cleaning a dental office compared with a house, in the owner's words. Due: next session. Owner — list any second or third commercial prospect currently in view, or state that there are none. Due: next session. |
| Carried forward | Residential price increase. Open since the spring. No owner, no date. To be placed on the next agenda as a decision, not a discussion. |
| Open tension | Take the account and let the trigger decide (Brooks), or hold until the commercial offer has its own positioning and the residential price is settled (Bennett). Unresolved. |
Why Each Line Is There
Decision 1 turns an opinion into a gate. David's “not yet” was advice. Written as a decision, it becomes a condition the owner can check on Friday morning without reopening the whole conversation: either the margin number exists or it does not.
Decision 3 is the line owners never write for themselves. It is Tyler's trigger, recorded as the specific event that would reopen the question. Without it, every bad evening shift becomes a reason to rethink the entire commercial idea at eleven at night. With it, one bad shift is just one bad shift. We made the same argument about decisions that never close: the reversal condition is the part that stops the re-deciding.
The carried-forward line is the uncomfortable one. The owner did not ask about residential pricing. Chloe raised it, and it went on the record because it has been open since the spring with nobody's name against it. On a session 7 record that is one line. If it is still there at session 10, the pattern will be on the page, and nobody has to be tactful about pointing it out.
The open tension is recorded, not resolved. Tyler and Chloe did not agree, and the record does not pretend they did. The owner will make the call, and next week the board will know which way it went and why.
What Happens to This Record Next Week
The next session does not start with a new question. It starts with the second item on Evelyn's agenda: review of last session's action items. Three items, three answers owed. Did the margin number exist on Friday? Was the quote sent, and at what price? Is there a second prospect or not?
If the owner comes back with the labor cost worked out, the board argues about a real number instead of a hypothetical one. That is when sessions get noticeably better. Owners who return with figures and ask the board to update a previous recommendation get far more useful answers than owners who start fresh each week. If the owner comes back without it, Evelyn's question is always the same: this was discussed last week, so what changed?
That loop is the difference between a board and a chat window that answers well and forgets. The advice in the sample is good, but most of its value is in the table, because the table is what gets read back. For the week-by-week version of how a standing board uses records like this, see what an advisory board actually does. If the margin arithmetic is the part you want, the unit economics piece works through it.
Keeping One Without a Board
You do not need our software to keep a record in this format. You need a page with six labels on it and the discipline to fill in the name and the date every time. The one-page template is free with the Board Brief below. The hard part is not the template. It is having someone who will read the last one back to you before you are allowed to ask the next question.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Boule Record?
A Boule Record is the written output of a Boule Board session, prepared by Evelyn Hart, the board's corporate secretary. It records the session number, date and advisors present, the owner's question in their own words, the decisions made (one per line), action items with a single owner and a due date, items carried forward from earlier sessions, and any disagreement that was left unresolved. It is not a transcript or a summary. It is a list of what is now owed, and the next session opens by reviewing it.
How is a Boule Record different from ordinary meeting minutes?
Minutes describe what was discussed. A Boule Record describes what was decided, who owns each follow-up, when it is due, and what remains open. It also records the condition that would reopen a decision, and it carries unresolved items forward by session number, so a question that keeps coming back becomes visible on the page rather than depending on anyone's memory.
Can I keep a record like this without Boule Board?
Yes. The format is six labels: session and attendees, question, decisions, action items with owner and date, carried forward, and open tension. A free one-page template comes with the Board Brief signup on this page. What the format cannot do on its own is make someone read last week's record back to you before the next conversation starts. That part needs a standing meeting with somebody other than you in it.
The Board Brief
Sign up and get the one-page Boule Record template: the decision on the table, what each advisor said, action items with owners and dates. Then, every two weeks, the Brief: one decision an owner faced, one number worth knowing, one question to bring to your board.
“A new client wants a quote that needs evening staff I don't have. I'm leaning yes because it's recurring. Tell me what I'm not seeing before I send it.”
Bring it to a weekly session. Advisors from finance, sales, operations and marketing argue it from their own corners, and you leave with a record of what was decided, who owns it, and by when. Next week, the board asks how it went.