appending from table to table

Howdy :

I'm running Postgres 7.1.3 on RedHat Linux 7.2 kernel version 2.4.7 rel 10.

(I'm on a roll today with the questions, right?)

Say I have a table. On a monthly basis, someone exports from MS Access a
new table
but the contents needs to be appended into the pre-existing table (call it
orig_table).

I'm trying to develop an automated means to do this, but the best I could
come up with is:

* run a cron job to dump the new table into a flat file
*modify the flat file - insert a line that says '\copy orig_table from
<name_of_file>'
* run a job that wakes up and `psql -U <user> -d <database> -f
./<name_of_file> `
*verify the orig_table (maybe get a count of new records; before / after;
something).

Is there an easier way to do this?

Thanks!

-X