The reason I caught my first mistake is that I have a different situation which where I could use a single spreadsheet which actually filters dynamically. Along with the Customer pricebooks, I also have someone who utilizes Excel to determine how we set pricing. So the workbook will populate with the Access pricing information, and she then plays with margin numbers to determine any price increases. These increases then will be input directly into Access with a form I've created.
But this calculator doesn't have to be specific to each vendor/items. It can be more like what we were looking for since the person who will be making pricing decisions will only use this when always connected to the db. i.e. - I can have her input what series she wants to use to make changes, so I don't have a million queries for each item.
I'm going to do a google search on how to get started with this, but would love any input you have. Requirement: she would need to input the item she wants (for the filter) in Excel, as opposed to having a parameter request set up in Access).