Board packs: getting the papers to directors, and keeping them in the right hands.

What a typical board pack contains

• The agenda and the minutes of the previous meeting, with an action list.
• The chief executive's report and management accounts against budget.
• Cash flow, banking and funding updates, including any covenant reporting to the bank.
• Papers seeking decisions: capital spending, new contracts, appointments or policy changes.
• Health and safety reporting, which many boards take first.
• Risk register updates and committee reports, such as audit and risk or remuneration.
• Confidential items: people matters, disputes, an approach from a buyer, or a strategy paper.

The Institute of Directors in New Zealand publishes guidance on how boards work and what directors should expect to receive. Your chair and company secretary decide the format; the point here is how to circulate it.

Practical details that help a board

Corrections are simple. If management revises a paper after circulation, upload it again as a new version. Directors see the current version, and the earlier one stays in the version history, so the minutes can refer to exactly what was tabled.

Directors can ask questions ahead of the meeting inside the room. Questions can be assigned to the chief executive or the finance lead, with categories and priorities, and the answers are there for every director to read rather than buried in a reply to one.

When a director's term ends, revoke their invitation and the room closes for them. Directors joining later can be given access to past meetings or only to future ones, by choosing which folders their group sees.

Search helps when someone asks what the board decided about the warehouse lease two years ago. ShareAndGo reads text from documents, including scanned minutes, so search finds words inside papers and shows highlighted snippets.

Directors do not need an account. They confirm their email with a six-digit code, so there is no extra password for them to keep.