Board & Governance

CBSmembers includes a Board section for managing directors, meetings, and society-level governance documents. It's a separate area from the member register — most directors aren't members, and the regulatory information held about them is different.

The Board screen is opened from the Board button on the main toolbar. The button only appears for users granted the manage_directors permission in Org Settings.

The screen has three tabs: Directors, Meetings, and Society.

Directors tab

The Directors tab lists every director the society has on file, showing name, current role, email, and whether they're active.

Adding a director

Click New director and fill in:

• Personal — title, first names, middle names, surname, known-as, date of birth, nationality, country of residence, occupation, National Insurance number
• Addresses — service address (the one used for public filings) and residential address (kept separate and access-restricted)
• Contact — email and phone
• Regulatory — credit issues flag with notes, fit-and-proper declaration text, date last signed
• Other directorships — any concurrent directorships in other organisations
• Significant controls — PSC-style entries for any entity the director controls
• Conflicts of interest — the CC29 conflicts register

Date of birth and National Insurance number are encrypted at column level, the same way bank details are.

A director can optionally be linked to a member record. This is a courtesy link only — it adds a jump button between the two views. It doesn't change which portal areas the person sees: that's decided automatically at login by email match (see On the member portal below).

Director terms

Each director has a history of terms recorded separately. A term captures the role (chair, treasurer, secretary, director), when the director was appointed, and when they resigned. A director can have multiple terms over their lifetime on the board.

Editing and resigning

Open a director from the list to edit any field. To mark a director as resigned, close their current term with a resignation date. The director record itself is never deleted — the history remains for audit purposes.

Every change to a director record is written to an append-only audit table.

Meetings tab

The Meetings tab lists all board, AGM, EGM, and committee meetings.

Creating a meeting

Click New meeting and set:

• Type — Board, AGM, EGM, Committee, or Other
• Title — short description (e.g. "March 2026 Board Meeting")
• Scheduled at — planned date and time
• Held at — actual date and time (filled in once the meeting takes place)
• Status — Scheduled, Held, or Cancelled
• Location — venue or "Online"
• Narrative — minutes, agenda summary, or any free-text record

The narrative supports the same simple formatting markers as postal letter templates:

Documents on a meeting

Each meeting can have any number of documents attached — agendas, minutes, board papers, supporting reports. The document count is shown next to the meeting in the list. Documents are uploaded the same way as on the Society tab (see below).

Society tab

The Society tab is the home for governance documents and notes that aren't tied to a specific meeting — your rules, policies, registration certificates, insurance documents, and any standing notes the board wants to keep alongside them.

Adding a file

Click Add file, pick a file, give it a label, and choose a document type (agenda, minutes, policy, note, other). The file is uploaded and stored alongside the society's other documents.

Adding a note

Click New note to create a text-only entry. Useful for short standing reminders or context that doesn't warrant its own file.

Reordering

Use the ↑ and ↓ buttons to reorder entries. The order is persisted, so the list appears the same way for everyone.

Editing and deleting

Select an entry to edit its label and metadata, or delete it. Deleting a file removes both the database row and the underlying stored object.

Director Record PDF

Each director record has a Director Record PDF button on the edit dialog. It generates a single-director regulatory report containing everything held on file — personal details, service address, regulatory disclosures, terms history, other directorships, significant controls, conflicts of interest, and fit-and-proper declaration.

This is the document to drop into the board pack, send for the annual return, or hand to a regulator on request. Generating it is one click — no compiling fields from spreadsheets, no chasing the director for missing items, because the record on file is the source of truth.

A Change history button next to it opens the full audit trail for that director — every field change, who made it, and when. Portal self-edits are marked (via portal) so you can see at a glance which changes came from the director and which from the office.

Conflicts of interest at every meeting

The CC29 conflicts register isn't a one-off form. Conflicts have to be reviewed at every board meeting, and the register kept up to date as directors take on new roles or relationships.

CBSmembers stores the conflicts register as a structured list on each director — every entry has a declared date, description, status, and a resolved date. Reviewing the register before a meeting is a matter of opening the Directors tab and reading the conflicts section, rather than chasing scattered emails or paper forms. The Director Record PDF includes the full conflicts list, so it can be tabled at the meeting directly.

Notify Board on a send

When you send a member-facing email through the Mail Sender, you can tick Notify Board after this send to fire a second email to all active directors. The board copy uses a separate "Directors" body authored on the Message card, with merge fields available for the original subject and body. See Communications for the full Mail Sender walkthrough.

On the member portal

Maintaining a full regulatory record for every director is an onerous task. The portal exists so that the office doesn't have to carry it alone — directors can fill in and maintain their own record.

When a director logs in, the portal recognises them by email and shows three director-only areas alongside (or instead of) the member areas:

• Board Meetings (/portal/board) — read-only view of upcoming and past meetings, with attached documents
• Society (/portal/society) — read-only view of the society's governance documents and standing notes
• My Record (/portal/my-record) — the director's own record, fully editable

On My Record, the director can update their own name, identity (date of birth, NINO, nationality, residence, occupation), service and residential addresses, contact details, other directorships, significant controls, and conflicts of interest. Board terms — appointments, resignations, role changes — are set by the board and remain read-only. Disclosures are the director's to maintain.

Edits write straight to the register with a full audit trail (marked (via portal)), so the office sees the new information immediately and doesn't have to re-enter anything. This means the secretary can send out a "please update your record" round to all directors at the start of a governance cycle and have the data flow back into the register automatically.

If a director is also a member of the society (their email matches both a director record and a member record), the portal shows both sets of areas under one magic-link login. No second account, no toggle.

Permissions

The Board feature is gated by a single permission: manage_directors.

A user with this grant can do everything on the Board screen — appoint and resign directors, edit director records, create meetings, upload board and society documents, and tick "Notify Board" on a send. Without it, the Board toolbar button doesn't appear at all.

Grant the permission in Org Settings → Users & Access.