So frustrated - ruby help needed

We have been trying to integrate with Kashflow for a very long time. We had it working fine for a while, but about 6 months ago something changed somewhere and now our soap calls are only sporadically working.
It is very frustrating because our calls to create and invoice and register the payment are always working, but our calls to add items to the invoice are rarely working (but do work sometimes!) so a lot of our invoices are showing as 'overpaid' and we are having to maintain all this by hand.
Our website is written in Ruby on Rails. We are using the standard Soap4r library.

Kashflow support says the problem is on our end, but, why does it sometimes work and sometimes not? Some calls work, some calls don't. We are using the same library... it just doesn't make sense.

Does anyone have any positive experiences with kashflow and ruby? Can you help us?

I think I see the issue. We have 2 servers. The problem is in the InsertInvoice call.

On one server "lines" are getting sent like this:
<n1:Lines xsi:type="n1:ArrayOfAnyType">
<n1:anyType xsi:type="n1:InvoiceLine">
<n1:Quantity xsi:type="xsd:int">1</n1:Quantity>
<n1escription xsi:type="xsd:string">3 DVDs at a time, Unlimited</n1escription>
<n1:Rate xsi:type="xsd:double">+17.99</n1:Rate>
<n1:ChargeType xsi:type="xsd:int">970656</n1:ChargeType>
<n1:VatRate xsi:type="xsd:double">+16</n1:VatRate> <n1:VatAmount xsi:type="xsd:double">+2.8784</n1:VatAmount> <n1:LineID xsi:type="xsd:int">1</n1:LineID>
</n1:anyType>
</n1:Lines>

This is causing your service to reject them.

On the other server they are sent like this:

<n1:Lines>
<n1:anyType>
<n1:Quantity>1</n1:Quantity>
<n1escription>3 DVDs at a time, Unlimited</n1escription>
<n1:Rate>+17.99</n1:Rate>
<n1:ChargeType>970656</n1:ChargeType>
<n1:VatRate>+16</n1:VatRate>
<n1:VatAmount>+2.8784</n1:VatAmount>
<n1:LineID>1</n1:LineID>
</n1:anyType>
</n1:Lines>

Which seems to work fine.
Now obviously we have an issue with different soap libraries on the 2 servers, but, in my opinion - and looking at the SOAP spec - both of these should be valid...

Actually, here's another example that is more worrying as it says it created the invoice properly, but, it didn't. This invoice ended up with no line items.


= Request

POST /api/service.asmx HTTP/1.1
SOAPAction: "KashFlow/InsertInvoice"
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
User-Agent: SOAP4R/1.5.9-SNAPSHOT (httpclient.rb/280, ruby 1.8.7 (2009-12-24) [i686-linux])
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 07:01:46 GMT
Content-Length: 1781
Host: secure.kashflow.co.uk

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<env:Envelope xmlns:env="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<env:Body>
<n1:InsertInvoice xmlns:n1="KashFlow">
<n1:UserName xsi:type="xsd:string">xxx</n1:UserName>
<n1assword xsi:type="xsd:string">xxx</n1assword>
<n1:Inv xsi:type="n1:Invoice">
<n1:InvoiceDBID xsi:type="xsd:int">796</n1:InvoiceDBID>
<n1:InvoiceNumber xsi:type="xsd:int">796</n1:InvoiceNumber>
<n1:InvoiceDate xsi:type="xsd:date">2010-09-14Z</n1:InvoiceDate>
<n1ueDate xsi:type="xsd:date">2010-09-14Z</n1ueDate>
<n1:Customer xsi:type="xsd:string">xxx</n1:Customer>
<n1:CustomerID xsi:type="xsd:int">1216605</n1:CustomerID>
<n1aid xsi:type="xsd:int">0</n1aid>
<n1:Lines xsi:type="n1:ArrayOfAnyType">
<n1:anyType xsi:type="n1:InvoiceLine">
<n1:Quantity xsi:type="xsd:int">1</n1:Quantity>
<n1escription xsi:type="xsd:string">2 DVDs at a time, Unlimited</n1escription>
<n1:Rate xsi:type="xsd:double">+13.99</n1:Rate>
<n1:ChargeType xsi:type="xsd:int">970656</n1:ChargeType>
<n1:VatRate xsi:type="xsd:double">+16</n1:VatRate>
<n1:VatAmount xsi:type="xsd:double">+2.2384</n1:VatAmount>
<n1:LineID xsi:type="xsd:int">1</n1:LineID>
</n1:anyType>
</n1:Lines>
<n1:NetAmount xsi:type="xsd:double">+13.99</n1:NetAmount>
<n1:VATAmount xsi:type="xsd:double">+2.2384</n1:VATAmount>
<n1:AmountPaid xsi:type="xsd:double">+16.2284</n1:AmountPaid>
</n1:Inv>
</n1:InsertInvoice>
</env:Body>
</env:Envelope>

= Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 07:01:47 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727
Cache-Control: private, max-age=0
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 393

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"><soap:Body><InsertInvoiceResponse xmlns="KashFlow"><InsertInvoiceResult>796</InsertInvoiceResult><Status>OK</Status><StatusDetail /></InsertInvoiceResponse></soap:Body></soap:Envelope>

Any word on this? I don't think our xml is technically wrong...