Solution · Annual general meetingsAnnual general meeting software: notice sent on time, attendance on record

What is an annual general meeting?

An annual general meeting (AGM) is the yearly meeting of a company's shareholders or an organization's members, where the matters assigned to it by the bylaws and the law are decided: approving the accounts, discharging management, electing directors or board members, deciding how profits are used, amending the bylaws. Corporations often call it the annual meeting of shareholders or stockholders; associations, trade bodies and cooperatives call it the annual members' meeting.

Its purpose is accountability: management reports to the owners or members, and they vote on the decisions reserved for them. In organizational terms, every form has three things in common. The list of eligible attendees is fixed before invitations go out, deadlines have to be met, and attendance has to be documented, because it determines the quorum and the majorities. These three properties set an AGM apart from an open event and define what attendee management has to deliver.

The list of attendees is fixed before anyone is invited. That is what sets an AGM apart from every other event.

How does an annual general meeting run in AirLST?

The process has five steps, all on the same attendee record:

1. Build the list. Import from the share register, member database or Excel into the guest list, with shareholder or member number and group (shareholders, board, press, guests).
2. Invite. A personalized invitation from invitation management in your design, from your sender address, with a personal registration link; deadlines as part of the template, reminders as a workflow.
3. Register. The invitee chooses to attend in person, through a proxy or by proxy form, and adds plus-ones and notes; every reply carries a timestamp. The admission ticket goes out automatically with the confirmation.
4. Admit. The check-in app scans the admission ticket, recognizes proxies and plus-ones, and records attendance with time and station. Several stations work on the same list.
5. Document. Attendance list and proxies as an export for the minutes and, where one is involved, the notary; attendance and no-shows in event reporting.

Which data and building blocks does an AGM need?

For each attendee, at least: name and contact details, shareholder or member number, group, invitation and registration status with timestamps, type of attendance (in person, proxy, proxy form) with the proxy's details, plus-one, any eligibility proof your bylaws require, and the check-in time. Depending on the legal form, number of votes, shares held or delegate status are added as custom fields.

The building blocks for this are standard in AirLST: guest list with custom fields and filters, invitation management with templates and your own sender, event registration with conditional logic, event ticketing with QR codes that can be used only once, a check-in app with live attendance, roles and permissions, a change log and event reporting. Anything beyond that, such as an access link for online attendance, is a configuration of the same building blocks.

Which formats does it fit?

Any meeting with a defined list of attendees and documented attendance: the annual shareholder meeting of a corporation, the annual members' meeting of an association, trade body or chamber, the general meeting of a cooperative, the partners' meeting of a privately held company, the delegate assembly of an umbrella organization. Employee meetings and owners' meetings follow the same pattern, as do special general meetings between AGMs.

• Financial services: banks, insurers and cooperatives with high requirements for proof and data protection
• Public sector (Europe): members' meetings of chambers and trade bodies with a scanned attendance list
• Corporate events: partner and employee meetings within a group of companies
• Conferences: when the meeting is part of a multi-day program

Which notice periods apply to an AGM invitation?

The notice period comes from the law and your bylaws, not from the software. It differs by country, state and legal form; corporations, associations and cooperatives each have their own rules for the notice of meeting, the record date and the registration deadline. The same applies to the question of when the AGM is due each year. What AirLST provides is proof: the send date for each invitation, a timestamp for each registration, the registration deadline as a hard limit in the form, and reminders to everyone who has not replied before the deadline. Whether a deadline was met can be read from the log. This does not replace legal advice; clarify the deadlines themselves with your legal team or counsel.

Can an annual general meeting be virtual or hybrid?

Whether a meeting may be held as a virtual shareholder meeting or in hybrid form is set by the law and your bylaws. For attendee management, little changes: the list of attendees, the invitation, registration with proxies and the timestamp stay the same. Instead of an admission ticket, a shareholder or member attending online receives a personal access link from the same registration; people in the hall are scanned, people online are counted at the access link. Both appear on the same attendance list.

Streaming and questions from the floor run on the meeting technology meant for that; AirLST gives it the eligible attendees and takes attendance back. For votes, AirLST offers its own online voting with for, against and abstain.