Okay, so after hours of Googling & drilling down through countless
Messageboard posts/replies, I've come up with something that works; it
ain't pretty, not as elegant as I'd like, but it works, so here it is
(in case someone else runs into the same problem):

Application.Run "WZTEMPLT.XLA!Commit"

This takes a while to run - it fires the .xla in the background, as
well as opening the database Workbook - but it DOES force the "Add
Record" or "Update Record" messagebox on the FIRST save-as from my
Template workbook.

tm