[PLUG] software for running a business

[Chad V <csv@gamebox.net>]

Beware:   Long Read


Background:
As most of you are probably doing, I have been doing some small
support operations "on the side" of my normal 8-4 job for the last 10
years.  It has always been the odd evening or weekend job every month
or two.  Cash and word of mouth only.  I put up an advertisement and
now I have some regular customers.  Home users and some SMB customers.
 So I decided to finally incorporate what I'm doing as a business to
run part time and to use for it's tax advantages (i.e. cell phone,
internet connection, vehicle, etc.).

Questions:

I'm starting this off just for me to do part time, but I would like to
leave room for expansion for myself and maybe add some employee's
later on.

1.  I'm looking for an application that takes care of accounting,
sales (products and services), marketing, etc. and can provide
something along the lines of a helpdesk request area for customers.
I've looked at Compiere (OSS version), hipergate, OFBiz, SugarCRM (OSS
version), Openbravo and vtiger.  So far, OFBiz and SugarCRM seem to be
winning me over.  Sugar is very complete and refined (pun?) with a lot
of add on's available, but OFBiz combines accounting and ERP with
inventory management and a built in product catalog and web store.

What ERP / CRM / Accounting / Sales / Marketing tool do you use for your SMB?


2.  If I can't find an app above that includes the problem & hours
tracking, what could I use for that?  I'm looking to give a customer
login credentials or one for each of their employee's so they can
login to a web site and fill out a ticket for me to look at later.
I'm very partial to GLPI so far and I've implemented it at another
company to use as their internal help desk application.  However, I
will have to test it out for multiple companies to login to while not
letting them see another companies issues.

Any ideas for other software that will perform this function?


3. Just in general, what open source applications do you use to run your SMB?


Thanks for any help.

Chad
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