Full disclosure - yes, I work at MS, but not on the Excel team, and have no stake in Excel in any way. That said, you can substitute Excel with any other spreadsheet processor you like :)

And I agree with you that in some cases transactions are hard to track with existing tools when there are very specific scenarios that are simply not common enough to be included in the "one-size-fits-all" services. For me those are cash transactions between friends and them paying back for things through, say, Venmo.