I have a tool that users need to enter date information into. I have two challenges

1. They user is not allowed to enter the day, only the month and year. I realize I could format the end result as month and year only (in custom formatting), but am unsure how to manage the input as month and year only.
2. The entry needs to stay in a (numeric) format that a COUNT function can be used to calculate the number of entries.

Thoughts?