Unlike other systems, Voltaire distinguishes between Individuals and Organizations. This is for two reasons: 1) Voltaire has been modeled closely after the real things and jobs you do day-to-day; 2) by distinguishing clearly between Individuals and Organizations, Voltaire maintains clearer distinctions of business entities for financials and bookkeeping purposed.

Individuals may be linked to Organizations as for example as employees of a company, and Individuals may be linked to each other as for example members of a household (see below).

To create a new Contact, navigate to the Contacts Source. Then click on the New button, or select New Contact... from the File menu.

This will open a new window and ask you to decide whether you are creating the Contact as an Individual or Organization, and whether or not the Contact is an Artist. Make the appropriate choices and click OK.

If you've made a mistake in creating the Contact as an Individual, Organization, or Artist, you can change this later by going to the Contacts menu and selecting the appropriate command from the Batch Edit Selected Contacts submenu.

Enter the data you need to to create the record; you can always edit the record later.

Immediately below the name fields for the Contact are the relationship tools: if you are creating an Individual and wish to link that Individual to an Organization, click on the Add button (+) to the left of the Company label. This will open the Contact Selector: begin typing a name and select the Organization you'd like to link the new Contact to. To link an Individual to an Individual, click on the Add button (+) to the left of the Partner label, and follow through with the Contact Selector window.

You can remove links to Individuals or Organizations by clicking on the Remove button (-) to the left of the relevant label.

Voltaire allows you to add an unlimited number of Phone Numbers, Email Addresses, IM (instant message) accounts, URLs, and Mailing Addresses. To add another Phone Number, for example, click on the Add button (+) to the left of any Phone Number. To remove a Phone Number, for example, click on the Remove button (-) to the left of the Phone Number. Select the appropriate label for the information you're entering; Phone Numbers also provide a Country menu that indicates the Country Code when you view the Contact.

Email Addresses and Mailing Addresses have the option to be included in a set of Mailing List addresses, as well as Press Release addresses. To set an Email Address or Mailing Address to be included in a Mailing List, check off the ML checkbox to the right of the address. To set an Email Address or Mailing Address to be included in a Press Release list, check off the PR checkbox to the right of the address.

You'll notice that there's a lock icon to the left of Mailing Addresses. This is because Mailing Addresses - really "surface addresses" - are used throughout the system, as for example when you ship an Artwork somewhere. To maintain the integrity of an address, it's recommended that you only make typographic corrections to a Mailing Address once it's been created. If a Contact has a new address, making the old address obsolete, you will want to Hide the old address and create a new one.

The Details & Notes section of the Contact allows you to set a Default Commission Percent (invoked when creating a new Consignment); a default Provenance Text; Interests; and Notes.

The Transaction History section cannot be directly edited. This section details a history of Transactions you've had with the Contact by using Voltaire - any Consignments, Reserves, Offers, Sales and Acquisitions creating by creating these Transactions in Voltaire.

The Bibliography section allows you to add Bibliographic references to the Contact, including URLs. When you click on the Bibliography label in the Contact view (either in the Browser or in a Detail window), a menu will popup allowing you to select a command to open the URLs in your web browser.

The Sets & Metadata section indicates which Sets the Contact belongs to, and other more technical information.