Cayuse Agreements supports hierarchical relationships between agreement records, allowing you to represent complex agreement structures — such as a master agreement with multiple statements of work, or an original license with a series of amendments — in a way that keeps all related records organized and traceable.
The Concept of Agreement Hierarchies
An agreement hierarchy groups related records under a single parent:
- The parent agreement is the primary or foundational record — typically the master agreement, the original license, or the base contract.
- Child agreements are dependent records that flow from the parent — amendments, extensions, statements of work, or related instruments.
A parent can have multiple children. Children can also have their own children, creating multi-level hierarchies where needed (for example, a master agreement, a first amendment to that master, and then a second amendment to the first amendment).
Hierarchies are stored in Cayuse using agreement-to-agreement links. Each link has a direction: one record is the parent, the other is the child.
When to Use Agreement Hierarchies
Agreement hierarchies are appropriate for:
- Master agreements with multiple SOWs — a master sponsored research agreement or collaboration agreement under which individual project scopes are added over time
- Amendment chains — an original agreement with a sequence of amendments, where each amendment builds on the prior version
- Multi-party arrangements — a framework agreement that governs multiple sub-agreements with different parties or departments
- License families — an original license with sublicense agreements as children
Do not use parent-child linking simply because two agreements involve the same counterpart. The link should reflect a formal legal or operational dependency between the records.
Linking an Existing Agreement as a Child of Another
If both agreement records already exist in Cayuse and you need to establish a parent-child relationship between them:
- Open the agreement record that will be the child.
- Locate the Related Agreements or Parent Agreement section in the record.
- Click Link Parent Agreement or the equivalent option.
- Search for the parent agreement by name, reference number, or type.
- Select the correct parent from the search results.
- Save the link.
The child record will now display the parent agreement in its hierarchy section, and the parent record will list this agreement as a child.
Linking an Existing Agreement as a Parent of Another
Alternatively, you can establish the link from the parent side:
- Open the agreement record that will be the parent.
- Locate the Related Agreements or Child Agreements section.
- Click Add Child Agreement or Link Existing Agreement.
- Search for the agreement you want to attach as a child.
- Select it and confirm.
The result is the same regardless of which direction you start from — a single link connects the two records with a defined parent-child direction.
Viewing the Full Hierarchy on a Record
On any agreement that is part of a hierarchy, the Related Agreements section shows:
- The parent record (if one exists), with a link to navigate to it
- All direct child records, with their name, agreement type, status, and reference number
For multi-level hierarchies, you may need to navigate up or down the chain to see the full picture. Some Cayuse configurations display a visual hierarchy tree view; others display only direct parent and direct children at each level.
Removing a Parent-Child Link
If a link was established incorrectly:
- Open either the parent or the child record.
- Locate the link in the Related Agreements section.
- Click Remove or Unlink next to the associated record.
- Confirm the removal.
Removing the link does not delete either agreement — it only removes the hierarchical relationship between them.
Practical Tips
- Establish the parent record first, then create or link child records. This is cleaner than linking records retroactively, though both approaches work.
- Use consistent naming and reference number conventions to make parent-child relationships obvious without having to open each record. For example, suffix amendments as -A1, -A2, and so on from the parent's reference number.
- If your office runs portfolio reports or hierarchy-based exports, accurate parent-child links are essential for those reports to reflect the true structure of complex deals.
- For guidance on creating a new child agreement from scratch (rather than linking an existing one), see Creating Child Agreements and Amendments.