The business world loves acronyms and calling one type of agreement by various names. Below is a quick break down on the various contract documents that a business will likely encounter and a non-exhaustive list of common names for various contracts.
Confidentiality Agreements - Commonly known as non-disclosure agreements or "NDAs".
These Agreements are often mutual but can be one-sided and typically have no dollar value associated with them. The terms are usually for 1, 3, or 5 years and often have survival non-disclosure obligations even after the term has expired. NDAs are used by businesses with their employees and with other parties such as vendors, subcontractors, or for business partnership arrangements to protect information from unauthorized use or disclosure.
Service Agreements or Terms and Conditions documents - Service agreements and terms and condition documents can be one-time arrangements or for multiple times of the same service or multiple times with various services. If multiple times of one service or various services will be provided, then a master service agreement or "MSA" is the most efficient contract option. Service agreements and MSAs usually contain both parties' rights and obligations (the legalese provisions) and will likely have all of the business terms contained in a separate document that incorporates by reference the service agreement or MSA terms and conditions. MSAs are also called global framework agreements when covering multiple countries for the services being offered.
Statement of Works (SOWs), Purchase Orders (POs), & Schedules - These types of agreements usually only contain the business terms of a deal, such as the fees, payment terms, services, performance metrics if any (service level agreements or SLAs and key performance indicators or KPIs) and the duration of the services or quantity of a product. These type of documents are usually not standalone agreements and usually incorporate all of the legal terms and conditions from a service agreement, MSA, or terms and conditions by reference.
Amendments, Change Orders, Novation(s) - These types of documents usually modify existing agreements. The name of the modifying document is either industry specific (i.e. change order is the common terminology in the construction industry and novation is often used in banking and real estate transactions).
Addendums – Addendums add additional terms to existing agreements, however, unlike amendments, addendums usually do not modify the existing terms to a service agreement or MSA. Most common addendums are Data Protection Agreements and Business Associate Agreements that are focused specifically on compliance with protection of personal data of natural persons). Although addendums usually don't modify existing terms of existing agreements, addendums are given priority/precedence if there are any conflicting provisions with the existing agreement.
If you have questions or need a legal review on any of the above contracts, please reach out for a consultation to discuss.