excel to MySQL

I need to do a PHP job for a guy who every month receives a xls file and needs to incorporate it to a MySQL database doing as less manual work as possible, any ideas?

Choose the tools for the job.  PHP is definitely not the tool for this job.

Perl sounds like a likely candidate though.  DBI can talk to MySQL and I'm sure there's something, perhaps even the thing in >>3 , on CPAN to read .xls files.