Is email and a shared drive good enough for a small board?

Often, yes — for a very small board with few contested votes and a diligent secretary. It breaks when you need to show who voted, who recused, which evidence was in front of the board, and whether quorum was met, years later.

What does Prepared Board add over email?

Per agent-facts.json: meetings, decisions, votes, motions, a consent agenda, minutes, documents, and recusals recorded on the decision; a seat count on the meeting header labeled as a count, not a legal opinion; and a full-record ZIP export from /app/export.

Can I leave Prepared Board and go back to email?

Yes. An Owner, Admin, or Chair can download the full board record as a ZIP from /app/export. /leaving-prepared lists what is included and what is not (document bodies are not included).

Honest comparison

Board portal vs email and a shared drive

Most small boards start here: the secretary emails the packet, directors reply-all, and the files live in a shared folder. It costs nothing and everyone already knows how to use it. The question is not whether it works on a good day — it often does — but whether a successor chair can reconstruct who decided what, with which evidence, two years from now.

Every Prepared Board statement on this page is quoted from /facts and /agent-facts.json (as of 2026-10-10). This page does not name or make claims about any commercial vendor.

Who email and a shared drive is genuinely fine for

Very small boards (three to five people) that meet a few times a year and rarely take contested votes.
Boards in their first year, before there is much record to keep, with a diligent secretary who files approved minutes promptly.
Boards whose only formal record is approved minutes, where nothing downstream depends on a per-decision trail.

If that describes your board, you may not need a board decision operating system yet. The rest of this page is for when it stops being true.

Where it breaks

Who voted, and how. Votes taken by reply-all or in the room live in the minutes sentence, if anywhere. Individual ballots are rarely recorded.
Who recused, on which decision. A recusal is usually a line in the minutes or someone's memory, not a field tied to the decision.
Evidence at close. The evidence for a decision is whatever attachment was last in the thread, which may not be the one the board voted on.
Quorum count. Quorum is counted by hand from who said they were there; nobody records the count against the bylaws' seat number.
Which pack directors read. Several copies of the packet circulate (final, final-2, revised); which one each director read is not knowable.
Exit: taking the record with you. The record is spread across personal inboxes. When the secretary rotates off, part of the record can leave with them.

Feature by feature

The Prepared Board column quotes only what agent-facts.json says it does today, and names the not-live limit that applies.

Criterion	Email and a shared drive	Prepared Board (from agent-facts.json)
Who voted, and how	Whatever the minutes say. Reply-all approvals are scattered across threads.	“A signed-in board can run meetings, decisions, votes, motions, a consent agenda, minutes” “If that decision stores Decision.outcome ADOPTED or DEFEATED (the same tokens as a certified VoteSession.result), the closed-record line says the vote was adopted or defeated.”
Who recused, on which decision	A minutes sentence or memory; not tied to a specific decision.	“If that decision has a conflict still stored as RECUSED, the closed-record line names who recused.” “A closed decision with no RECUSED conflict does not get a recusal clause.”
Evidence at close	The last attachment in a thread or a file in the folder, with no link to the vote.	“the latest closed decision with evidence on the decision record” “It lists each closed decision with its resolution text, its outcome monitors (target, metric, status, due date, and last report), its revisit date, its follow-up actions done, open, or overdue, and its closure evidence, and says so when any of these is missing.”
Quorum count	Counted by hand, if at all.	“On a meeting with attendance marked, the meeting header shows whether the seat count was met: Present or Remote versus the seats required by that board's quorum settings.” “The line says this is a count, not a legal opinion.” Not live: ASPA is not implemented. Quorum is a seat count from board settings plus Present or Remote attendance. It is not a statutory opinion, and there is no ASPA written-consent engine.
Which pack directors read	Multiple emailed copies; no single published pack.	“the last sealed meeting, the current pack” “A published pack can be opened from a public /pack link without an account.” agent-facts.json does not claim a per-pack version history or a diff between pack versions, so this page does not either.
Follow-through after the vote	Action items sit in minutes or in someone's to-do list; nothing lists open vs overdue per decision.	“It does not judge whether a target was met, because no stored field records that; it shows the last report as written.” Not live: No bank, treasury, or payment account is connected. Prepared does not move money or show a live balance. Not live: There is no live filing feed to the IRS, a Secretary of State, county registry, or town clerk, and no Form 990 or state-charity e-file. /app/filings-window is a board-declared board-review window with an in-app attestation that the board reviewed a board copy — not IRS or state acceptance. Calendar filing rows remain reminders. Documents in a pack are board copies, not proof a filing was accepted.
Sign-in and access	Whatever the email and sharing settings allow; removing a departed director depends on someone remembering every share.	“Demo sign-in is email and password through NextAuth credentials.” Not live: WebAuthn passkeys are not production-live. Ceremony code may be wired, but a live passkey still requires WEBAUTHN_LIVE, which the demo does not turn on. Not live: SSO (SAML and OIDC) is built but not production-live. Enterprise SSO via WorkOS (Sign in with SSO by email domain, mapped to existing board memberships, never granting admin, audited) turns on only once production WorkOS credentials are connected and an email domain is mapped; the demo has neither. The older self-hosted handshake still requires SSO_LIVE, which the demo does not turn on. Not live: SCIM directory sync is not production-live. A directory handler may be wired, but live provisioning still requires SCIM_LIVE, which the demo does not turn on. Not live: The onboarding checklist row labeled portal access verified (MFA) is a checkbox the board marks; it does not inspect accounts. Two-factor sign-in itself is live (authenticator app, optional per member, can be required per board by the chair).
Handing the record to an outside agent	You can paste threads into an agent, but you choose and redact them yourself.	“A published pack can be fetched as plain-text markdown for outside agents at /pack/{token}/agent” “Prepared does not call any AI model or push data to agents. A director can also connect their own AI assistant to the read-only MCP server / agent API (OAuth sign-in or a personal access token) when the chair allows it (/agents/connect).”
Exit: taking the record with you	Nothing to export, but also nothing assembled: the record is wherever the threads are.	“An Owner, Admin, or Chair can download the organization's full board record as a ZIP from /app/export” “Document bodies, evaluation responses, secrets, pack/sponsor link tokens and token hashes, and other organizations' rows are not included;”

What is not live in Prepared Board

Verbatim from agent-facts.json notLive. Weigh these before you switch.

WebAuthn passkeys are not production-live. Ceremony code may be wired, but a live passkey still requires WEBAUTHN_LIVE, which the demo does not turn on.
SSO (SAML and OIDC) is built but not production-live. Enterprise SSO via WorkOS (Sign in with SSO by email domain, mapped to existing board memberships, never granting admin, audited) turns on only once production WorkOS credentials are connected and an email domain is mapped; the demo has neither. The older self-hosted handshake still requires SSO_LIVE, which the demo does not turn on.
SCIM directory sync is not production-live. A directory handler may be wired, but live provisioning still requires SCIM_LIVE, which the demo does not turn on.
Stripe billing is built but not live. Checkout, the customer portal, signed webhooks, and plan gating turn on only once production Stripe credentials are connected; until then billing pages say Billing not live yet — contact sales, plans are not enforced, and nothing is charged. Seat meters are not built.
ASPA is not implemented. Quorum is a seat count from board settings plus Present or Remote attendance. It is not a statutory opinion, and there is no ASPA written-consent engine.
Prepared does not quote, bind, or broker D&O insurance and is not carrier-connected. /app/do-insurance is a board-declared binder/policy-date tracker with an in-app board-review attestation only — not an insurance application, not coverage advice, and not a verified coverage amount. An annual director questionnaire tracker at /app/questionnaires can record board-declared checklist attestations in-app.
No bank, treasury, or payment account is connected. Prepared does not move money or show a live balance.
There is no live filing feed to the IRS, a Secretary of State, county registry, or town clerk, and no Form 990 or state-charity e-file. /app/filings-window is a board-declared board-review window with an in-app attestation that the board reviewed a board copy — not IRS or state acceptance. Calendar filing rows remain reminders. Documents in a pack are board copies, not proof a filing was accepted.
Outbound email is not live in the demo. Delivery is reported only after a configured provider (Resend or Postmark) returns HTTP 2xx. Without those credentials, no send is claimed.
There is no Clear evaluation response action. A director can Retract a response. Clearing is not a product path.
The onboarding checklist row labeled portal access verified (MFA) is a checkbox the board marks; it does not inspect accounts. Two-factor sign-in itself is live (authenticator app, optional per member, can be required per board by the chair).
Customer-managed encryption keys (BYOK) are not live.
No independent security audit or certification yet.
Prepared does not auto-delete or auto-purge documents. /app/document-retention is a board-declared category schedule with an in-app Adopted / board-reviewed attestation only — template aid, not legal counsel, and not a compliance determination.
A paid recruiter tier (higher contact limits / commercial shortlists) is planned, not live. Billing checkout is built but not live until production credentials are connected.
Newsletter confirmation and issue send are not live — no email provider is connected. Signups stay PENDING; Approved issues are not emailed.
Uploaded files are not antivirus-scanned. PDFs pass strict structural validation (no encryption, JavaScript, embedded files, launch or form-submit actions) before storage; that is not a malware scan. Upload only files from sources you trust.
Database point-in-time restore covers the last 6 hours only; there is no longer-term or off-provider database backup yet, and uploaded files have no point-in-time restore.

How to switch, and how to leave

Switching from email and a shared drive

Open the matching demo board below and walk one closed decision end to end before changing anything.
Start with your next meeting, not your archive: mark attendance, record the motion, the vote, and any recusal on the decision as it happens.
Upload the documents the board actually voted on as the decision's evidence; keep the old folder read-only as your historical archive.
agent-facts.json does not claim a bulk importer, so plan to carry open decisions and open actions forward by hand rather than expecting an automatic import.

Leaving Prepared Board

An Owner, Admin, or Chair downloads the full board record from /app/export as a ZIP (format prepared-board-record-export-v1). Leaving Prepared lists every table included and everything that is not — document bodies, for example, are not in the export.

Questions

Is email and a shared drive good enough for a small board?: Often, yes — for a very small board with few contested votes and a diligent secretary. It breaks when you need to show who voted, who recused, which evidence was in front of the board, and whether quorum was met, years later.
What does Prepared Board add over email?: Per agent-facts.json: meetings, decisions, votes, motions, a consent agenda, minutes, documents, and recusals recorded on the decision; a seat count on the meeting header labeled as a count, not a legal opinion; and a full-record ZIP export from /app/export.
Can I leave Prepared Board and go back to email?: Yes. An Owner, Admin, or Chair can download the full board record as a ZIP from /app/export. /leaving-prepared lists what is included and what is not (document bodies are not included).

Try a board like yours

Kittery Public Library is a small volunteer trustee board, the kind that often starts on email. The fall meeting-room policy is live and an anonymous gift stays on consent.

Open Kittery Public Library from Try a board (no password typed), or read its published pack first: /sample-decision. Open first: Fall Trustees — meeting-room policy.

Other comparisons: A spreadsheet decision log · A paper board book · Vs board portals (category) · How to choose a board portal · Free decision templates