RIJ,
I read about this on off another site (noreast?) and did a basic one last year but never followed really used it. I am not an excell geek but it is pretty easy to do a basic layout.
I also looked into commerical products and found a couple that I bought and tried. One was called "fishnet" ...lots of interesting data entry options. I used this for a while and it was more advanced then what I had done with excell but sort of lost interest in it. I think it cost 15 bucks.
http://www.fishnetsoftware.com/features.htm
I encourage you do it and check out the others too... Sounds like a good winter project