I think it depends on what you want to do. To declare my interest: I work for a software company that has written software for cleaning companies, which you can see here:
Malinko scheduling & CRM for cleaners But, I think the best way to approach it is to think what is the least technical way of doing things that works for you? I've seen some people implement software systems and end up spending all their time trying to satisfy the requirements of the software, rather than the other way round!
However, I think excel can be the perfect thing sometimes, as long as you haven't got too many customers and you don't want to record too much information about them. Heck, even a pen and pad of paper can be the best approach sometimes.
I ran a recycling business using a combination of outlook for the scheduling, excel recording collection results (number of bags picked up etc) and access for holding the customer database. This worked for a little while, but when the number of customers increased it became unwieldy and couldn't scale up.
If you implement a software system that is designed to handle your information, it can make your life easier in ways you didn't realise could happen. Do you want to be able to see your list of jobs for the day on your phone and send your next job a text at the touch of a button? How about integrate with a TomTom device so it sends all your jobs to the TomTom each night? What happens when you have staff and you want to generate job sheets for them? Or would you like to take a photo and store this image with the job record? I could go on, but I won't!
