Suggestion: Streamline permissions process

This is a suggestion and a question. Is there a way (process or aftermarket app) to better and more easily maintain permissions. As it stands its ungainly to add/change/view permissions when there are more than a couple membership levels.

I would think the ideal would be more of a spreadsheet layout with checkboxes for the enable/disable and then the specific edit actions (number of times allowed daily, etc) as simple text boxes.

Conversely is there a way to more easily change these things on the backend thru phpMyAdmin or something?

Thanks in advance for others guidance and experience on this