Ask HN: Tools for Managing Client Information

I’m a freelancer working to bootstrap my own company, and so far I’m doing most things “the manual way”, so I keep a good amount of information in things like spreadsheets.

I was looking for a better way to store client information, since I typically get 3 o 4 different contacts (managers of different areas), and to keep a record of what has been agreed with each one can be a mess.

I always thought that what I needed was a CRM, but after trying a couple, I’m not sure that’s what I really need.

How do you solve this problem? What tools (ideally FOSS) do you use?