Looking for simple template - need to crunch some numbers for my parents

Hi, I'm a total newbie to creating an intuitive spreadsheet that will take a month's worth of my parents income and expenses. I want to be able to list the vendor, the date it was paid, the amount of the bill, and create then choose categories to fit the expenses and income into a category that can be listed in maybe a pie chart or bar graph of the various categories. We want them to move into a assisted living community but I need to compare their income versus what their expenses are every month. I need to be able to look at total numbers overall and also amounts for each category.

For example:

My parents paid a AAA membership. I want to put it into an expense category of "Auto" with a subcategory of perhaps "Maintenance". In the same month, he will have paid his auto insurance. So I want to list that vendor under an expense category of "Auto" with a subcategory of perhaps "Insurance". At the end of the month, I want to be able to look at the category "Auto" and determine how much was spent for various vendors in that category.

Another example: He spends money every day for a Nurse's Aide to come to the house for both of them. I'm not sure what category to put that in but I want some template that would have a LOT of different household categories and subcategories to differentiate.

Is there an already exiting template for this kind of thing? I looked at some and there weren't enough categories or they were too involved, etc. I just need to list a bunch of expenses for one month, possibly more.

Help??

It doesn't get good reviews.

http://download.cnet.com/Quicken-Del...-10052050.html

I've used Microsoft Money and now Quicken for many years. It works perfectly fine. There's always going to be negative reviews about everything. There's a reason why Quicken is still around, because it works. I use it pretty extensively and on a daily basis. I've thought of trying to create something in Excel, but as shg stated, trying to reinvent what Quicken does wonderfully would take forever and I would end up with a solution that isn't as good as Quicken.