Category Totals Using Lists

This is my second post: I love this forum! So many experts out there willing to help - this is wonderful.

I know how to accomplish this using PHP, JavaScript, MySQL, and other programming languages, but I never learned VBA. I hope this can be accomplished using formulas. You tell me.

Attached is a simplified example of the report I'm working with.

1) Transaction data is downloaded into excel.

2) There is a PARMS worksheet containing:

A) A LIST named CATS containing Category Names.
B) A LIST named SUBCATS containing Sub-Category Names.
C) A LIST named FINDSTR containing substrings to FIND within downloaded Transaction Description strings.
D) A column named IS_CAT next to FINDSTR, indicating which Category each FINDSTR belongs to.
E) A column named IS_SUBCAT indicating which Sub-Category each FINDSTR belongs to.

3) There is a REPORT_DATA worksheet containing the downloaded transaction data (Date/TransactionDescription/Amount):

A) With a column named SUBCAT added where the corresponding Sub-Category should be listed for each transaction, based on the existence of FINDSTR in the Transaction Description.

4) There is a CATEGORY_TOTALS worksheet that shows Totals By Category and Sub-Category.

So basically, I need to know how to do this:

On the REPORT_DATA worksheet:

FOR Each REPORT_DATA Row,

LOOP THRU PARMS!FINDSTR:

IF PARMS!FINDSTR exists in Transaction Description, REPORT_DATA!SUBCAT = the corresponding PARMS!IS_SUBCAT

END LOOP

END FOR

To create the CATEGORY_TOTALS worksheet:
- I think I can figure this out using =SUMIF, once I have the SUBCAT labels on the REPORT_DATA worksheet.

I hope I've explained this well enough. Any and all advice is appreciated.

Thanks.