Many companies, especially as they venture into strategic meetings management, are drawing up comprehensive, stand-alone meeting policies. If you’ve added that task to your plate, here are 15 topics you’ll have to address.

1. Meeting registration and approval thresholds or criteria
2. Accommodations
3. Air travel
4. Food-and-beverage guidelines
5. Guests and spouses
6. Use of and interactions with suppliers, both preferred and other
7. Venue/hotel sourcing
8. Contracting and risk management
9. Meeting budgeting and currency conversion methods
10. Use of online attendee registration and event Web sites
11. Payment methods and process
12. Meeting-related ethics (rewards programs, familiarization and site-inspection trips, gifts from suppliers)
13. Compliance requirements and consequences for noncompliance
14. Shipping
15. Security

This list comes from the white paper “Building a Strategic Meetings Management Program,” written by the Groups & Meetings Committee of the National Business Travel Association. The full paper is available for download at NBTA’s online resource library. The white paper also suggests that a meeting policy include the same general information—definitions, roles and responsibilities, references, and scope—as other company policies, and that it is aligned in tone and language with company culture.