Hi,
I've taken a look at your brief and at the sample web service that you provided a link for. All looks reasonable and I should be able to deliver this for you, no problems.
I'd propose to build this as a .Net application, which has excellent support for interfacing with SOAP web services, MySql connections and uploading/directory creation via FTP. I've done all these things before many times so don't see any difficulties here.
Being a .Net app, it can run on any Windows machine (if you can confirm a target OS that would be great) and we could make it as either a program to run on the task scheduler, or if you prefer it could be a Windows Service, so it runs truly in the background.
Have a couple of questions for clarification (e.g. when you want it filtered by office, status etc - will these be configuration parameters, also when you want the list updating/records removed, will this be a local list maintained by the program, or are you intending for the MySql database to be updated directly). Also I'd need some kind of sight of the MySql database, or a mockup of it. But these are only small queries and won't get in the way of me getting started straight away.
I'm more than happy to hand over all the source code too, so you're not tied to me if you ever want any future changes made. All my code is compliant with Microsofts coding guidelines and fully commented, so easy to pick up.
Do let me know if you have any queries regards my proposal,
Regards,
Chris
PulseLab Ltd