That’s probably your best bet.
However, there are probably people who are conversant with all the whistles and bells in Quickbooks who might actually be able to tell you how to do what you need to do.
Your Excel idea has merit.
My wife, even with years of expertise with the big accouting packages, regularly creates massive Excel spreadsheet templates to do things that even the report writers associated with those packages cannot do.
She has even gotten Excel “Formula too long” errors once or twice, as I recall, and getting one of those means you’re doing some *serious* crunching...
Good luck.
People like your wife amaze me.