In order to have it automatically set the password, we modified the adduser script from the e-smith original script for my batch-users contrib.
So, follow the link in the message above to install the batch-user script. Once done, here is the command to add an individual user w/password to the system.
echo USERNAME:PASSWORD:FIRSTNAME:LASTNAME | /path/to/adduser
Where "/path/to/adduser" is the path to the "adduser" script, which should be "/opt/utilities/batch_users/adduser"
Let me know how you get along.
Abe