Contract Relationships Overview

This article will provide you with an overview of related records. This includes parent, child, and amendment records and contract families.

The Problem

Oftentimes, contracts do not stand alone. You might have multiple contracts that are related to each other, or that deal with the same counterparty or business relationship. The contracts themselves might reference or modify each other, like a renewal or an amendment. When reviewing these contracts, you need to see all of the connected contracts to fully understand the contents of your contracts and your legal obligations. You can use contract relationships to represent the connections between contracts and make it easier to view these contracts together.

How Do Contract Relationships Solve This Problem?

You can create a contract relationship between two records. You can see all of the records that a single record is related to on the record’s view.

There are different types of contract relationships. The most general is a related record - a simple one-to-one relationship between two contracts. This is most useful when representing the relationship between contracts that don’t directly modify each other, but you might want to reference together. An example of this might be a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) and a Statement of Work (SOW).

Parent and child records represent a more specific type of contract relationship where the contracts directly reference each other and must be evaluated as a group. Child records are usually sub-agreements to the parent record. Each parent record can have multiple child records, but each child record can only have one parent record.

Child records can also be parent records themselves. If you build multiple levels of parent/child relationships, you create a contract family. When a record is a part of a contract family, in addition to the record’s direct parent and child records, you can see the entire contract family. This is important because the contracts need to be evaluated as a group. An example of this might be a Master Service Agreement, Statement of Work, and an amendment on the Statement of Work.

Parent and amendment records represent a contract relationship where the amendment modifies the original parent contract. A parent record can have multiple amendment records, but each amendment record can only have one parent record.