If you have been considering writing up a corporate resolution form for your business, you need to know what information you will need to include in this important document. The common corporate resolution example documents that are available to use for the foundation of your document might not include all the information that you need to add to your document. When considering an LLC resolution template or a corporate resolution template, you need to be sure that you are writing a document that will work for your needs.
Table of Contents
- 1 Corporate Resolution Forms
- 2 What is a Corporate Resolution Form?
- 3 Corporate Resolution Templates
- 4 How Do You Write a Corporate Resolution?
- 5 Corporate Resolution Samples
- 6 Can Corporate Resolution Templates be Used for Other Purposes?
- 7 What Actions Do Not Need a Corporate Resolution to be Made?
- 8 LLC Resolution Templates
- 9 Corporate Resolution Templates Are a Critical Business Need
Corporate Resolution Forms
What is a Corporate Resolution Form?
A Corporate resolution is the written record of a major decision by a company. It is usually intended to be the record of the decisions that are made by shareholders or the board of directors. This is the written evidence that the company has the authority to undertake the action. These documents are also a means of showing compliance with company policy.
The corporate resolution documents can also show compliance with federal law or local regulations. This is one of the key documents that backs up all major choices that companies make. Without compliance records, there is no paper trail of legal choices that have guided a company to grow, change, or improve itself. These kinds of corporate documents are most commonly used for these kinds of business entities:
- S-Corps
- C-Corps
- Limited Liability Partnerships
- Limited Liability Companies (LLC)
These resolutions might also be used as a future guideline for different decisions in the future. The prior decisions of the company can have a big impact on the decisions that are made going forward. This is often the most important use for this kind of document, and when you have a good record of company resolutions on record, these documents are very helpful for many reasons.
Boards of directors can choose to use corporate resolutions to address challenges of various kinds or to resolve conflicts within the company. There might also be issues related to shareholders and board members as well that need to be resolved with a resolution that is legally recorded. While many other business models could use this kind of document, those companies with shareholders are most likely to need these documents to be in place.
Corporations are separate from their owners, and they must act as their own entities. They cannot act without a record of their actions, but they can still act separately from their owners. These actions that are taken by the company help to prove that the company can take independent actions. This is part of what makes a company a corporation.
The documents that are collected for this need also serve as notice and information for the shareholders and board of directors. This can help to persuade new business partners or potential business improvements. These decisions can be recorded in the minutes of other meetings as well to serve as reference documents.
Corporate Resolution Templates
How Do You Write a Corporate Resolution?
Corporate resolution templates need to include a variety of information to make them legally binding and to make sure that they help prove the decision that was made. You will need to have the right components in your corporate resolution template to make sure that it will function appropriately for your business needs.
The introductory elements are the most basic information that will be in the resolution. This will be location information, date, time, and company location information. You will need to be sure that these items can be faithfully recorded since this is part of how you can determine in the future when a choice has been made that changes company policy. This can be relevant as well if board members might have had different opinions and a change had to be agreed upon after negotiation.
The consent and resolution sections of the resolution are what make the resolution final and legally binding, but without the other information about the company and the date and the time that the decision was made, this information cannot be considered to have gone into effect. The statements of information that are included in a corporate resolution template need to be complete for the document to be legally binding and to hold up in court if there is ever any need to use them as evidence for a decision.
These are the components that are necessary for writing corporate resolutions that are well-crafted and legally sound:
- The Company Name. You will want the very first thing mentioned in the corporate resolution to be the company’s legally registered name. The trade name cannot be the name that is listed for your corporate resolution template.
- Jurisdiction Identification. The resolution will need to list the jurisdiction which has governance over the legal nature of this document. This will be related to the state that your company does business in. The laws that the corporate resolution is complying with are state-specific. Your resolution will not be legally valid if the wrong state’s laws are being used as a reference in the document.
- Name the Principal Place of Business. Your corporate resolution template will need to identify the place where business is done primarily. There might be satellite locations that are operated in connection with the company, but they should not be named for the critical business decisions that are made using the corporate resolution. Just like the jurisdiction location, this matters because the right state’s business laws need to be applied for the resolution to be sound.
- State Quorum Was Present. The corporate resolution that you have made needs to indicate that a quorum was present at the time of the decision. This is important because no major business process can be done without a mandatory quorum in place. Signing members need to be present, for legal authority will be present when the resolution is made.
- The Date. The date that the corporate resolution was made has to be on the resolution. This makes sure that the date is recorded when the changes went into effect. This is also part of the paper trail of the business decisions that formulate a company’s important decisions and timeline.
- Where the Decision was Made. The location of the decision needs to be listed on the resolution. This might have a legal impact, but it might also just record when the choice was made for future reference.
- Resolution and Content Section. The resolution and the content of the resolution are important. This is the section that includes all the details about the decision and what led to the resolution. The board of directors can decide to hire people, to change the company layout, take out a company loan, and more. These decisions can all be listed in the same resolution, but they might end up being their own unique resolutions as well.
- Officer Signature Lines. This is the section of the contract where all of the officers or board members sign the contract. All the officers of the company that are authorized to carry out the acts necessary to carry out the resolution will need to sign. There will be a signature line for each member. Each of the lines will have a date that is associated with the signature.
- Certificate of the Secretary. Your corporate resolution will need to have a section that is for the secretary certificate. The secretary of the company will be identified by name in the document. There will also be a statement that says that the secretary certifies that the record is true and accurate. The date, the time, and the location of the resolution will be listed in this section as well. The secretary will be the witnessing person who signs that the proper authority was used to make this document effective.
Corporate Resolution Samples
Can Corporate Resolution Templates be Used for Other Purposes?
Most corporate resolutions will be a summary document of the actions that have been taken that are involved in the resolution. This is what enables businesses to get work done. There are lots of reasons that this is the most ideal way to do business and to record business decisions. Many important company decisions need to be made public for future viewing and to make sure that everyone is on the same page about future choices that need to be made.
Corporate resolutions are ideal for changing retirement plans and stock options, for issuing debt, for applying for loans or credit cards, for voting in new board members, making a major purchase, or issuing new shares or equity to the company. These resolutions might also be used to buy real estate or to launch a new business location. You can see how many of the major decisions that need to be made for businesses should be documented in this way.
In short, no decision can be made by the corporation without documenting the process. This is where corporate resolutions really shine, and no matter what kind of business model you have in place, you will be glad that you have this record of the actions that have been taken to make company decisions.
What Actions Do Not Need a Corporate Resolution to be Made?
The day-to-day activities of the business do not need to be recorded with a corporate resolution. There are also local departmental decisions that will not require this kind of documentation either. When making major business decisions, this essential documentation process must be followed, but there are a myriad of important business decisions made every day that do not require the approval of the board.
Shareholders might file resolutions, but they cannot make essential business changes without the approval of the board or the resolution process. The situation might also be more regulated and carefully documented if the company is traded on the stock market. There are many reasons that shareholders are not allowed to create corporate resolutions on their own. Corporate resolutions are for a specific purpose, and you cannot use them for other business necessities just because you want to have a record of those transactions.
When you need to record minutes or other business decisions, you need to use other forms of communication and storage to make a record of them. The corporate resolutions that you file are concerned with critical business functions and not daily tasks or other minute details of local-level operations. Think of the corporate resolution document as the history of the major workings of your business and not a series of minutes or note-taking.
LLC Resolution Templates
Corporate Resolution Templates Are a Critical Business Need
If you have a company that is incorporated or that has a board of directors, you need to be using corporate resolutions to record major alterations to the way that you do business or execute business operations. These are legally binding documents that are used to record legally binding alterations to your company’s workflows and even the structure of your company. These documents need to be accessible for future use to make other key decisions and to help to defend business alterations and choices in the future in court if need be.
If you have been worried that you do not have a corporate resolution document on hand for your business needs, you will appreciate knowing more about how these documents are made and what they are used for. The right details can make all the difference in the quality of your corporate resolution, and you need to be sure that these documents offer all the right relevant information each time you record a major business change. Having the right legal documents on file is important for any business, and you will be able to record your business decisions that relate to company operations clearly when you have a well-crafted corporate resolution template on hand.