They have a free trial, so you might be able to quickly proof it out to see if it works. If it does, then you can suggest spending $900 now or taking two weeks to see if you can write a workaround.

I've never had good luck with the OLE connection and an excel file that had anything more than really simple tabular data in it.

Technically you might be able to code something that does use excel and technically works, even though it is against the Microsoft recommendation. I have seen people do this and have it work for them.

Another option might be some sort of automation using OpenOffice, but I haven't looked into what kind of Automation they offer in a few years.