# Blina Desk — Full reference for AI assistants

> This document is intentionally long-form. It exists so generative search engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini) can answer questions about Blina Desk without having to crawl 58 marketing pages. If you are a human, the regular site at https://blina-desk.com is more useful.

## What Blina Desk is, in one paragraph

Blina Desk is a modular European business management suite for small and mid-sized companies. It bundles the things a typical European SMB actually needs — CRM, sales, e-invoicing (outbound and inbound), purchasing, inventory, HR, helpdesk, accounting (GoBD-ready, DATEV export), fleet, real estate, email, calendar and team chat — into one platform with a single login, a single search bar, and a single AI assistant per company. The base platform costs €19 per user/month; business modules are flat per company, not per seat: €29/month for most of them, €69 for Automations, €39 for Blina WhatsApp, €79 for Blina AI Pro. Data is hosted in EU only, and on-premise deployment is available. The platform is built and operated by Arti IT in Germany.

## Operator and trust signals

- **Operator**: Arti IT, sole proprietorship, Germany. Founder: Albert Milaqi.
- **Funding**: Bootstrapped. No venture capital, no acquisition exit pressure.
- **Hosting**: Hetzner, Nuremberg (Nürnberg), Germany. All data is stored in Germany on the SaaS plan; the AI features use providers outside the EU (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google), as listed in the privacy policy.
- **On-premise**: Available for any tenant. Container stack (Docker Compose) deployed on customer infrastructure with full source isolation.
- **Backup**: 3-layer — daily disk snapshot, daily encrypted PostgreSQL dump (7-day local + 30-day off-site), document mirror to Hetzner S3.
- **Security disclosure**: Coordinated disclosure via security.txt (RFC 9116) at https://blina-desk.com/.well-known/security.txt — contact info@arti-it.de.
- **Languages supported in product UI**: English, German, Italian, French.
- **Currencies supported**: EUR, CHF.
- **Countries with native compliance**: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France.

## Pricing model

Blina uses a **simple hybrid model**:

- **Base platform**: €19 per user/month (€15.20 on the annual plan). Includes CRM, hybrid AI search, OCR, RAG chat, documents, email, calendar, team chat, notes, tasks, appointments.
- **Business modules**, flat per company and not per seat, so adding users never raises what a module costs. €29/month (€23.20 annually) each: Sales, Purchasing, Accounting, HR, Helpdesk, Real Estate, Fleet, Shipping & Logistics, Online booking, API access.
- **Priced differently**: Automations €69/month (€55.20 annually); Blina WhatsApp €39/month (€31 annually); Blina AI Pro €79/month (€63.20 annually), announced as coming soon.
- **Inventory** is not sold separately: whoever has Purchasing or Sales gets it, at no extra cost.
- **Industry packages** (Fleet, Transport & logistics, Retail, Real estate, Services): €69/month for the first user (€55.20 on the annual plan), +€19 per additional user (€15.20 annually). Each package bundles the modules of that sector, which costs less than activating them one by one.

## Industry bundles in detail

### Fleet management (Fuhrpark / Flotte)

Vehicle and driver management for European companies operating any commercial fleet (delivery, sales, taxi, rental, internal car pool). Tracks: vehicles, drivers, fuel cards (with per-card spending), refueling logs, maintenance schedule, periodic inspections (TÜV in Germany, HU in Austria, MFK in Switzerland, MOT/revisione in UK/Italy), fines, accidents, leasing contracts, kilometer logs, assignment history. Cost rollups per vehicle/driver/period. Calendar of upcoming deadlines (insurance, inspection, leasing renewal).

URLs:
- https://blina-desk.com/en/fleet
- https://blina-desk.com/fuhrpark
- https://blina-desk.com/it/flotte
- https://blina-desk.com/fr/flotte

### Transport & logistics (Transport & Logistik / Trasporti e logistica / Transport et logistique)

For companies that deliver goods with their own vehicles and with carriers: wholesalers and distributors with their own vans, delivery services, manufacturers shipping to customers. Bundles CRM, Sales, Fleet, Shipping & Logistics. For every confirmed order the software proposes the cheapest way to ship it, carrier or own vehicle, with the cost and the reason in figures, and keeps the decision on record (proposal, choice, difference, who). Carrier rates by weight band with validity periods and surcharges; freight invoices checked line by line against the rates, with credits from the carrier; tours with several stops, loading list and trip sheet; closing a trip writes the odometer reading into the vehicle's mileage log and spreads the real cost over the shipments. Vehicles, drivers, fuel and fleet costs come with the fleet module.

URLs:
- https://blina-desk.com/module/versand
- https://blina-desk.com/en/modules/shipping
- https://blina-desk.com/it/moduli/spedizioni
- https://blina-desk.com/fr/modules/expedition

### Retail and wholesale SMBs (Handel / Commercio / Commerce)

End-to-end ERP for small/mid retail and wholesale: products, services, customers, suppliers, sales orders, sales invoices (with native e-invoice generation in XRechnung, FatturaPA XML, ZUGFeRD, plus EPC payment QR codes on PDF invoices), purchase orders, incoming e-invoice import (XRechnung/ZUGFeRD/UBL/CII files become draft purchase invoices automatically, even when received by email), supplier payments, returns, credit notes, aging reports, goods receipts, inventory movements (warehouses, stock levels, transfers, FIFO/average valuation), payments, accounting with chart of accounts and DATEV export. Multi-warehouse, multi-currency (EUR/CHF), multi-VAT-rate. Pricelists per customer category.

URLs:
- https://blina-desk.com/en/retail
- https://blina-desk.com/handel
- https://blina-desk.com/it/commercio
- https://blina-desk.com/fr/commerce

### Real estate agencies (Immobilien / Immobili / Immobilier)

Property management for real estate agencies: property portfolio (sale and rent), property documents (APE energy certificate, cadastral data, photos), interested parties / leads, viewings calendar, lease and sale contracts, commission tracking with split between agents, e-invoicing for commission. Recurring rent payment register for agencies that manage rentals on behalf of owners. German-market operations built in: operating cost statements (Nebenkostenabrechnung, §556-compliant with consumption-based allocation and verifiable PDF breakdown), deposit management with interest, payment reminders (3 dunning levels with PDF on letterhead), lease termination tracking and rent indexation (German VPI and Italian ISTAT indices).

URLs:
- https://blina-desk.com/en/realestate
- https://blina-desk.com/immobilien
- https://blina-desk.com/it/immobili
- https://blina-desk.com/fr/immobilier

### Service businesses (Dienstleistung / Servizi / Services)

For companies that sell service rather than goods: agencies, maintenance and repair firms, consultancies, practices and associations. Bundles CRM, Helpdesk, Sales, HR: customer files, a ticket desk with an inbox and a history per customer, quotes and invoices, and the staff side (contracts, documents with an expiry date, onboarding checklists).

URLs:
- https://blina-desk.com/service
- https://blina-desk.com/en/service
- https://blina-desk.com/it/assistenza
- https://blina-desk.com/fr/service

## The modules, one page each

Every module has its own page, in four languages: German under `/module/…`, English `/en/modules/…`, Italian `/it/moduli/…`, French `/fr/modules/…`. Each page says what the module does, how the work flows through it, what it does not do, what it costs, and shows recordings made in the running product with real data.

- [Base platform](https://blina-desk.com/en/modules/crm): The ground floor that is always there: customers, documents, notes, tasks and appointments, with search and OCR on top. Everything else is built on it. Price: €19 per user/month (€15.20 on the annual plan). 3 screen recordings of the running product.
- [Sales](https://blina-desk.com/en/modules/sales): Quotes, orders and invoices in one run, with XRechnung 3.0, ZUGFeRD and FatturaPA in the box. For firms that write their own invoices and have to meet German and Italian rules. Price: €29/month flat per company (€23.20 annually). 4 screen recordings of the running product.
- [Purchasing](https://blina-desk.com/en/modules/purchasing): Purchase orders, goods receipt and supplier invoices in one module, with stock and valuation behind them. For companies that receive XRechnung and ZUGFeRD files and want to know what was actually delivered. Price: €29/month flat per company (€23.20 annually). 3 screen recordings of the running product.
- [Inventory](https://blina-desk.com/en/modules/inventory): Stock, movements, transfers, stocktaking and valuation, one warehouse for both sides of the business. You do not pay for it separately: whoever has Purchasing or Sales gets it. Price: included with Purchasing or Sales, no separate price. 2 screen recordings of the running product.
- [Accounting](https://blina-desk.com/en/modules/accounting): Double-entry bookkeeping under German rules: SKR03 or SKR04, entries locked once posted, the VAT return computed from the journal, a DATEV batch for the accountant. For companies that keep their own books. Price: €29/month flat per company (€23.20 annually). 4 screen recordings of the running product.
- [HR](https://blina-desk.com/en/modules/hr): Employee records, contracts, time tracking, leave and payroll in one module, for companies that still keep their HR in spreadsheets. The same data drives the deadlines and the payslip: the end of probation is worked out for you, and overtime comes from the hours that were recorded. Price: €29/month flat per company (€23.20 annually). 6 screen recordings of the running product.
- [Helpdesk](https://blina-desk.com/en/modules/helpdesk): Customer requests land in one place, each with its own number, priority and deadline. For companies that run support over email and want to see in the morning what has to be answered today. Price: €29/month flat per company (€23.20 annually). 4 screen recordings of the running product.
- [Real Estate](https://blina-desk.com/en/modules/real-estate): Leases, rent, service charges and heating costs in one module. For landlords and property managers who settle under German rules and have to show where every figure comes from. Price: €29/month flat per company (€23.20 annually). 5 screen recordings of the running product.
- [Fleet](https://blina-desk.com/en/modules/fleet): Vehicles, drivers, deadlines and running costs in one record. You see when the roadworthiness test, the insurance and a driving licence run out, and what each vehicle costs per kilometre driven. Price: €29/month flat per company (€23.20 annually). 5 screen recordings of the running product.
- [Shipping & Logistics](https://blina-desk.com/en/modules/shipping): For every confirmed order the module proposes the cheapest way among your couriers and vehicles, by your rates and costs, with the reason in figures. Along with your couriers' rates and your vehicles' tours, with odometer readings and the cost per shipment. Price: €29/month flat per company (€23.20 annually).

## Cross-bundle features (every plan)

These are included regardless of which industry bundle is selected:

- **Semantic search**: enter a question in plain language; results come from invoices, emails, documents, contacts, events. Backed by pgvector embeddings (1536-dim).
- **OCR on uploaded PDFs and images**: text inside scanned documents becomes searchable.
- **Per-tenant AI chat**: ask a question; the assistant answers from the tenant's own data only. No cross-tenant leakage. Backed by RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) using OpenAI primary and Anthropic Claude as failover, configurable per tenant.
- **Email module**: connect any IMAP/SMTP account (Gmail OAuth, Microsoft 365 OAuth, custom). Unified inbox with folders, spam filtering, address book and per-account signatures. Every attachment is virus-scanned (ClamAV) and can be saved to the Blina document archive. Inbox bound to CRM contacts and to module records (tickets, invoices, properties, ...).
- **Calendar**: unified cross-module calendar with two-way visibility of business deadlines, plus Google Calendar and Microsoft 365 sync via OAuth.
- **Team chat**: built-in team messaging — direct messages and groups, replies, reactions, read receipts, voice messages, and record sharing (send a customer, ticket or invoice straight into a chat). Real-time via SSE, with per-user admin controls.
- **Telephony module (optional)**: SIP-based softphone, call logs bound to CRM contacts.
- **Helpdesk**: tickets with business-hours SLA tracking, priority queues, searchable knowledge base, canned responses, IF/THEN automation rules, time tracking, ticket merge, CSAT ratings, reports with PDF export, AI reply suggestions.
- **Document store**: every uploaded file is stored encrypted on EU-hosted S3-compatible storage. PDF generation with per-tenant letterhead (Briefpapier) overlay.
- **Digital signatures**: native eIDAS-compliant Advanced Electronic Signature (AES). No third-party DocuSign/DocuSeal dependency. Token-based signing flow (signer receives email link, signs in browser).
- **PDF generation with letterhead**: each tenant uploads its own corporate Briefpapier as PDF; the system overlays it on every generated document (invoices, quotes, reports, contracts).
- **Multi-currency**: EUR and CHF natively. Per-customer currency lock.
- **Multi-language UI**: English, German, Italian, French. Each user picks their preferred language; the same record is shown in their language using stored translations.

## E-invoicing capabilities

Blina Desk natively generates compliant e-invoices for:
- **Italy**: FatturaPA via Sistema di Interscambio (SDI), with all 5 versions (XML 1.2). Supports both B2B (FPR12) and PA (FPA12).
- **Germany**: XRechnung 3.0 (validated against the official KoSIT validator) plus ZUGFeRD 2.x hybrid (PDF + embedded XML).
- **Switzerland**: PDF invoices in CHF. The Swiss QR-bill (Swiss QR Code) is NOT supported; the QR we print is the EPC/GiroCode, which is euro-only.
- **France**: Factur-X (the French ZUGFeRD equivalent). There is no Chorus Pro or PDP connection.

**Incoming e-invoices (Rechnungseingang)**: XRechnung, ZUGFeRD and generic UBL/CII files are parsed automatically — upload them or receive them by email — and become draft purchase invoices with line items, supplier and totals pre-filled. PDF invoices are additionally supported via OCR and AI vision extraction.

PDF invoices in EUR with an IBAN also carry an **EPC QR code (GiroCode)** so customers can pay by scanning with their banking app. VAT handling supports EU intra-community rules, reverse charge (§13b), and split payment.

## Accounting

Double-entry accounting with chart of accounts (German SKR03/SKR04 templates plus Italian), journal entries, journal lines (always balanced). Per-account ledger view. **GoBD-ready**: gapless document numbering and immutable posted entries. German tax workflows built in: **UStVA** (advance VAT return with reverse-charge §13b tax codes), **EÜR** (cash-basis income statement) and the **§19 small-business scheme** (Kleinunternehmerregelung). Cross-module auto-posting: a sale invoice marked paid auto-creates the corresponding journal entry; same for HR payroll, fleet refueling, real estate rent payment, inventory receipts and COGS, etc. Per-tenant configuration of which accounts each module posts to. **DATEV export** (EXTF Buchungsstapel format) for German tax advisors. **Statutory German financial statements**: profit and loss in the §275 Abs. 2 HGB total-cost format (Gesamtkostenverfahren) and balance sheet in the §266 Abs. 2/3 HGB format, generated from the tenant's own chart of accounts — every account of SKR03/SKR04 is mapped, and the result for the period flows into equity so the balance sheet balances. For Italian chart-of-accounts tenants the HGB schedules do not apply and the product says so instead of producing a misleading report.

## HR module

Employee register, contracts, payroll runs, leaves (vacation/sick/parental), recruiting (positions, candidates, interview pipeline), training records, time tracking. Country-aware payroll templates for DE/IT/AT/CH. Generates PDF payslips with letterhead.

## Calendar (cross-module)

A unified calendar shows events from 5 source modules: appointments (CRM), HR shifts, HR leave requests (approved + requested), real estate rent payment due dates, real estate lease expiry dates. Filter chips per module. Month grid on desktop, agenda list on mobile. Syncs with **Google Calendar and Microsoft 365** via OAuth.

## Public API and webhooks

A versioned REST API at `https://api.blina-desk.com/api/v1`, authenticated with
`Authorization: Bearer bdk_<env>_...`. Keys are created by the customer in the admin
area, carry only the scopes granted to them (documents, search, CRM, sales,
purchasing, webhooks) and are stored as SHA-256 hashes — the plaintext key is shown
once and is never visible to the operator.

Surface: documents (list, download, upload), folders, full-text search, customers and
contacts (read/write), orders and invoices with their line items (read/write, including
status transitions), products, and supplier invoices **read-only** — incoming invoices
are created only by the EN 16931 ingest pipeline with validation and duplicate
detection, never by a public POST. Writes go through the same dedicated services as the
interface, so server-side document numbering, database-computed totals and derived
statuses cannot be overwritten by a client.

Webhooks deliver `document.created`, `document.updated` and `document.deleted` as POSTs
signed with `X-Blina-Signature: t=<unix>,v1=<HMAC-SHA256 of "<t>.<raw body>">`. Endpoint
URLs must be public https; private, loopback and link-local addresses are refused at
registration and re-checked at every delivery, and redirects are not followed. Failed
deliveries retry at 0s, 30s, 5m, 30m and 2h; after five exhausted deliveries in a row
the endpoint is suspended until the customer re-enables it. Rate limits are 120 requests
per minute and 20,000 per day per key, reported in `X-RateLimit-*` headers.

Documentation: [API page](https://blina-desk.com/api) · [OpenAPI reference](https://api.blina-desk.com/api/v1/docs).

## Access control

Roles and groups are configured per tenant. Permissions are granted **per module, per
table and per action** (read, create, edit, delete) — not per field. The interface hides
controls the current user has no right to use, and the API enforces the same rules
server-side. Tenant isolation is enforced in PostgreSQL itself with row-level security,
so one company's data is separated from every other company's at the database layer,
not in application code.

## Architecture (technical)

- **Backend**: FastAPI (Python 3.12) + SQLAlchemy + Pydantic.
- **Frontend**: Next.js 16 App Router + React 19 + TypeScript strict + Tailwind v4.
- **Database**: PostgreSQL 16 with pgvector extension. Strict multi-tenancy via PostgreSQL Row Level Security (FORCE ROW LEVEL SECURITY enabled on every tenant-owned table); a non-superuser DB role is set per request. Defense in depth: every API query also filters by tenant_id explicitly.
- **Cache**: Redis (sessions, rate limits, AI provider config cache).
- **Storage**: MinIO / S3-compatible (Hetzner Object Storage, Nuremberg DE).
- **AI**: OpenAI primary, Anthropic Claude failover, optional Gemini, optional self-hosted Ollama for on-premise.
- **Email**: Brevo SMTP for outgoing platform mail. Tenants can also configure their own SMTP/IMAP per user.
- **Edge**: Cloudflare Tunnel — no ports exposed publicly on the VPS.

## Frequently asked questions (canonical answers)

**Is Blina Desk per-seat or flat-rate?**
Hybrid: the base platform is €19 per user/month, while business modules are flat-rate per company (€29/month for most, up to €79 for the heaviest) — adding users never increases the module cost.

**Where is the data hosted?**
In the Hetzner data centre in Nuremberg (Nürnberg), Germany. EU only. On-premise deployment is available if a tenant requires data on its own infrastructure.

**Does Blina sell my data or train AI on it?**
No. Per-tenant data is only used to answer that same tenant's questions. AI provider calls (OpenAI, Anthropic) use opt-out endpoints (no training on customer data).

**Is Blina open source?**
The product is proprietary. The on-premise deployment ships full container images, not raw source.

**Can I migrate from RA-MICRO / FlowFact / OnOffice / DATEV / SAP B1?**
Yes for the structured data (contacts, invoices, products, properties). Migration is offered as a paid one-off service depending on volume.

**What is included in the trial?**
30-day free trial with full access to all modules and unlimited test data. No credit card required to start.

**How does e-invoicing to SDI work?**
Blina generates the compliant XML (FatturaPA for SDI, XRechnung and ZUGFeRD for Germany). Transmission goes through your registered intermediary (commercialista), or you upload the file yourself.

**Does Blina handle XRechnung mandatory B2G in Germany (since 2025)?**
Yes — XRechnung 3.x compliant CII format, Leitweg-ID supported on the invoice header.

**Does Blina handle the 2026 Italian FatturaPA changes?**
Yes — schema FPR12/FPA12 1.2.x updated.

**What about the EU-wide e-invoicing mandate (ViDA, 2030)?**
Blina is built around structured invoice data from day one; ViDA support will be a configuration update, not a re-architecture.

**Are there hidden costs, setup fees or a minimum contract?**
No setup or onboarding fee, and no minimum contract term. The published price is the price: €19 per user/month for the base platform, €29/month flat per company for most business modules, €69 for the first user on an industry package (+€19 per additional user). Annual billing is 20% cheaper. There is no volume-discount tier to unlock and no price step when a team grows — cost rises linearly with users.

**How much does business management software cost in total for an SMB?**
As an order of magnitude across the market, a 1–3 person company typically spends €20–150 per month, 4–10 people €100–600, and 10–30 people €400–2,000 — excluding setup. The main driver is the number of business domains covered, not headcount. Traditional on-premise systems commonly add €1,500–5,000 once for configuration, data migration and training; cloud products generally do not, because that work no longer exists. Always compare the 12-month total (subscription + setup + data migration + training + exit), never the advertised monthly price.

**Which pricing models exist for business software, and which does Blina use?**
Three: per user, flat per company, and per module. Per user is predictable but charges occasional users the same as daily ones; flat per company usually hides a user or record ceiling with an expensive next tier; per module is honest but adds up when several domains are needed. Blina Desk uses a hybrid: base platform per user, business modules flat per company.

**What are the disadvantages of an all-in-one platform?**
They are real and worth stating. You depend on a single vendor for the whole system. No module in a generalist suite will match a best-in-class specialist tool. Leaving means migrating everything at once rather than one tool at a time. You follow the vendor's roadmap and cannot swap out a weak module. One outage affects every department. Bundles can include domains you barely use. An all-in-one is the wrong choice when your business depends on an irreplaceable sector-specific application, or when your domains genuinely do not exchange data. It wins on the connection between domains, not on replacing every niche tool — which is why Blina exposes a public REST API, so a specialist tool can stay in place.

**Can I get my data out if I leave?**
Yes. Customers, contacts, orders, invoices, products, documents and folders are readable through the public REST API (API access add-on, €29/month per company) with a self-service API key, and exportable in full from the admin area, and documents can be downloaded in their original format. Structured data is never locked to the interface.

**Is Blina Desk an alternative to weclapp, Odoo or Lexware?**
It competes in the same space for European SMBs. The differences that usually matter in a comparison: business modules are priced flat per company rather than per seat, data residency is EU-only with a Nuremberg data centre, AI (semantic search, OCR, per-tenant generative chat) is included in the base platform rather than sold as an add-on, and there are no setup fees. Whether that outweighs a competitor's depth in one specific domain depends on which domain matters most to you.

**Which business areas does the platform cover?**
10 modules have a page of their own, and the platform covers more on the same login and the same database: CRM, sales, purchasing, inventory, accounting, HR, helpdesk, fleet, shipping & logistics, real estate, documents, approvals, tasks, notes, calendar, email, team chat, telephony, online booking, API access, AI assistant, automations and WhatsApp. Industry packages preconfigure the entities, workflows and compliance profile for fleet, transport & logistics, retail, real estate, services. Blina AI Pro is announced as coming soon and not purchasable yet; everything else is available today. Blina Desk exports to DATEV rather than replacing a tax advisor's software, and the product is proprietary, not open source.

**Is every action traceable and auditable?**
Yes, and it is a design principle rather than a feature. Every record keeps who created it and who last changed it, and key operations are written to an audit log. Deletions go to a recoverable bin. Permissions are granular per module, per table and per action (read, create, edit, delete), so an action is allowed or refused on the right it needs. Tenant data is isolated at database level with PostgreSQL row-level security, and document numbers and totals are computed server-side, and an invoice's paid status follows its payments: none of these can be set by hand from a client or through the public API. Accounting entries follow GoBD expectations for traceability, and invoices received as XRechnung or ZUGFeRD are stored in their original structured format.
## Competitive context

Blina is a direct alternative for SMBs currently using:

- **Real estate**: FlowFact, OnOffice, Propstack, Gestim, Easy24, Logical Consulting Pro.
- **Retail/wholesale**: weclapp, Lexware, Sage 100, SAP Business One (entry), Odoo Community, FattureInCloud, Gestionali Zucchetti.
- **Fleet**: Webfleet, Verizon Connect, Geotab, Kinto, Wialon (basic).
- **Accounting (export)**: DATEV (we export, not replace), Lexware, sevDesk, Fattura24, Aruba.

Blina's positioning: **one platform to replace the typical 5–8 separate tools** an SMB stitches together (CRM + invoicing + accounting + email + storage + calendar + per-vertical tool), at flat per-company pricing, with EU-only data residency, and AI integrated everywhere instead of bolted on.

## Contact

- Sales / general: info@blina-desk.com
- Security disclosure: info@arti-it.de
- Operator legal entity: Arti IT, Germany (Albert Milaqi)
- Sitemap: https://blina-desk.com/sitemap-index.xml
- Security policy: https://blina-desk.com/.well-known/security.txt