My Girlfriend helps a bit, but for the most part, it's myself working.

I do transportation modeling, anywhere from modeling traffic flows, traffic impact studies, transit studies, safety impact studies, to transportation policy.

The tools I can't live without are:

* Ubuntu
	+ QGIS
	+ PostgreSQL and PostGIS
	+ Grass
	+ SKype
	+ Codeweaver that runs MsOffice 2007
	+ **EDIT ADDED:** PyDev/Eclipse
	+ **EDIT ADDED:** Gnome DO
* VirtualBox - Win Vista
	+ Microsoft Office 2007
	+ CAD and Transportation Software I use
	+ Adobe Acrobat

I currently do most if not all of the business work through Excel and Word. I live in Canada and I was wondering what are some of the products you use for business purposes: inventory, invoicing, tendering, backup, email logs, data interoperability.

What are some of the proprietary or open-source tools that'll make my life easier? The more tools and suggestions you mention, the better as I'm willing to try a solution at least once.

**EDIT**
Concerning the comment some of the issues I have difficulties with include:

* Optimize my project organization: in a lot of my projects, the input data is similar, but the clients and project are different, so a good file/project manager
* My invoice system is basically an excel workbook per year, and each tab represents a new invoice. The same goes to bids and inventory.
* I use Gnome Do for logging in project hours, but a lot of times, I forget to turn it on.
* I use PGadmin III to manage my postgresql, It'll be nice if there were addons to that.
* A good organization system, that is dedicated to organizing projects

I hope that answers the comment