I have a db with an employees table which contains each user, a groups table which contains the groups, and a usersingroups table which tracks what groups an employee is a member of. however, what I need to implement (possibly by setting up different "grade" groups) an organisational structure for approval. Reason being that, say I have a data entry department with 2 teams, each managed by a separate supervisor. Each supervisor should be able to approve and modify reports etc only for their own staf. However, the supervisors manager should be able to do the same for both teams (because they're one grade higher). So basically people need to be able to approve, modify etc for people at a lower level than them provided they're in the same team. Can somebody help me out on how to put this in the db. do i need to create another table or ... ?