At my new job, we sell imported stuff. In order to be able to sell said stuff, currently the following things need to happen for every incoming shipment:

• Invoice arrives, in the form of an email attachment, Excel spreadsheet
• Monkey opens invoice, copy-pastes the relevant part of three columns into the relevant parts of a spreadsheet template, where extremely complex calculations happen, like =B2*550
• Monkey sends this new spreadsheet to boss (email if lucky, printer otherwise), who sets the retail price
• Monkey opens the reply, then proceeds to input the data into the production database using a client program that is unusable on so many levels it's not even worth detailing
• Monkey fires up HyperTerminal, types in "AT", disconnect
• Monkey sends text messages and emails to customers using another part of the horrible client program, one at a time

I want to change Monkey from myself to software wherever possible. I've never written anything that interfaces with email, Excel, databases or SMS before, but I'd be more than happy to learn if it saves me from this.

Here's my uneducated wishlist:

• Monkey asks Thunderbird (mail server perhaps?) for the attachment
• Monkey tells Excel to dump the spreadsheet into a more Jurily-friendly format, like CSV or something
• Monkey parses the output, does the complex calculations
• // TODO: find a way to get the boss-generated prices with minimal manual labor involved
• Monkey connects to the database, inserts data
• Monkey spams costumers

Is all this feasible? If yes, where do I start reading? How would you improve it? What language/framework do you think would be ideal for this? What would you do about the boss?