Cayuse Agreements is a web-based system for managing the full lifecycle of research-related contracts at universities and research institutions. It gives contracts offices, technology transfer offices, and research administrators a single, structured place to track agreements from initial request through execution, amendment, and closure.
Who Uses Cayuse Agreements
Cayuse Agreements is designed for the people who negotiate, review, approve, and monitor research contracts:
- Contracts and sponsored programs staff who manage CDAs, MTAs, DUAs, Sponsored Research Agreements, and similar documents
- Technology transfer staff who handle licenses, options, assignments, and collaborative research agreements
- Research administrators and department staff who need visibility into agreement status affecting their projects
- Faculty and principal investigators who request agreements or need to check the status of agreements tied to their research
Two system roles control what each user can do: Agreements Administrator (full access to create, edit, and manage all records) and Agreements Researcher (read access and limited interaction, suitable for faculty and department-level staff).
What Problems It Solves
Many offices manage research agreements through a combination of shared drives, email threads, and spreadsheets. This approach creates real operational problems:
- No single source of truth for agreement status
- Missed expiration dates and renewal windows
- Difficulty answering questions like "Do we have a CDA with this company already?"
- No audit trail for negotiations and approvals
- Poor visibility across offices or departments
Cayuse Agreements replaces these workarounds with a structured system that tracks every agreement, its parties, its documents, its key dates, and its current status in one place.
Core Capabilities
Centralized agreement tracking. Every agreement — regardless of type — lives in a searchable, filterable record. You can find any agreement by party name, agreement type, reference number, status, or date range.
Lifecycle management. Agreements move through defined statuses that reflect where they are in your process, from initial request through negotiation, signature, execution, amendment, and eventual closure or expiration. Key statuses include:
- Pending
- Requested
- In Negotiation
- Legal Terms Approved
- Signature (Company)
- Signature (Institution)
- Fully Executed
- Amended
- Closed
- Expired
- Renewed
- Terminated
- Cancelled
- On Hold (Internal)
- On Hold (External)
Agreement types supported. The system handles a broad range of agreement types, including:
- Confidentiality/Non-Disclosure Agreements (CDAs) — inbound, outbound, and mutual
- Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs) — inbound, outbound, academic, and industry
- Data Use Agreements (DUAs), including HIPAA variants
- Sponsored Research Agreements
- Licenses and Options
- Assignments
- Amendments
- Joint Development and Collaboration Agreements
- Clinical Trial Agreements
- Master Agreements and Statements of Work
- Several more available in the drop-down menu of options
Cross-office visibility. Because all records are in one system, staff across your contracts office, tech transfer office, and sponsored programs office can see the same information without duplicating records or passing spreadsheets back and forth.
Integration with Cayuse Sponsored Projects. Agreements can be linked directly to sponsored project proposals and awards, connecting the contracting process to downstream grant management. See How Cayuse Agreements Relates to Cayuse Sponsored Projects for details.
Key date tracking and document storage. Each agreement record holds its effective date, execution date, expiration date, termination date, and any other relevant milestones, alongside the actual agreement documents.
People and organizations. Agreements are linked to the people involved (with roles such as manager, negotiator, and attorney) and to the organizations that are party to them (such as licensee, licensor, and owning organization).