Multiple Documents

Hi,
I have a spreadsheet that I am populating, a
dashboard of sorts, and the data to populate it is coming from 3 other
spreadsheets and an .html documents as well. Each of these 4 source
documents has different data in them each month and on a monthly basis,
I am collecting these spreadsheets and the .html document, manipulating and
bringing the data into the consolidated spreedsheet. What would be the best
way of doing this keeping in mind that I am having to manipulate the source
docs to get what I want out of them to place in the dashboard. Would a query
or simply linking be better? If a query, how would I go about that?
Thanks for any help in advance,

Brian