I needed a low cost case tracking for SAR investigations/filings for our BSA unit. I simply created one in Access which is working fine. It contains all of the information we need, the description field holds an unlimited number of characters. The upkeep is easy. And since we already had Access as part of MS Office, the cost was 0.
If we ever neeed to get fancier at some later date, we will check vendor products.
Access allows you to easily create reports and it also will create a data entry screen.