# Objects and records

An **object** is a kind of thing you track. A **record** is one of them.

## What ships

- **Leads**. People you might work with, before you know whether you will.
- **Contacts**. The individual people you talk to.
- **Accounts**. The companies you do business with.
- **Opportunities**. The work you are trying to win, moving through a pipeline.

Leads and Contacts both describe people, and the split is deliberate: it stops a
prospecting list from silently becoming your customer list.

## Adding your own object

**Settings, then Data, then Objects**, then **New Object**. Give it an icon, a
singular label, a plural label and a description.

Add an object when you are tracking something with a life of its own and a history
worth keeping. If it is one more fact about a record you already have, it is an
[attribute](/core-concepts/attributes).

## Working with a record

The record page holds its fields on the left and tabs for its activity, email,
notes and linked records. Fields edit in place, with no save button.

You can pin a record to the top of the table, and merge two records when the same
customer got entered twice.