I agree with Wayne in questioning your use of MSDE with 15-20 users. But I disagree with him about the lookup tables. I've done this with SQL-Server systems since the Fox 2.x days and it can really cut down network traffic for those relatively static lookup tables.

I've always kept a "version" table, both on the server and on the workstation. Every time the app starts, it compares version #'s for each of the tables involved. If the server version is later than the workstation version, the file gets copied down (or updated). To distribute changes, make the change on the server version of the table and increment the version number.