I've now had conversations with a couple of people interested in integrating spreadsheets into their websites. Originally I considered crafting a form specialised for each person's needs, something that would work well but take a bit of time for each person and be difficult to edit at a later date. Also people who use websites might be most comfortable with that interface, and it's very easy to create a complex web form that's cumbersome to use.
Today I've been investigating a Drupal project called Sheetnode, which integrates the online database system SocialCalc into Drupal. SocialCalc was written by Dan Bricklin, who worked on the VisiCalc spreadsheet application way back in 1979.
Unlike Google Spreadsheets, which is closed-sourced and can be merely linked to or embedded into a webpage, SocialCalc is open source, which means it can be tightly integrated into the Drupal system. That means that information changed on your Drupal site will update information on the spreadsheet. It also means you can lock down access to the spreadsheet to specific users.
Feel free to give it a try. I've set up a sample spreadsheet and a blank spreadsheet to test from. The changes you make won't be saved so feel free to experiment.
