VanaDash

VanaDash

The internal back office of Vanadium Systems, a one-person software company in Romania: invoicing, bank reconciliation, email, team chat, calendar, CRM and server monitoring in a single app, on a single small VPS. It runs in production every day.

The source is public so you can read it, run it and send changes. It is source-available, not open source: see License.

What's inside

There is also a thin Android shell (Capacitor) that loads the web app and receives push notifications.

Why it is built this way

Everything follows from three facts: one developer, one VPS with 1 vCPU and 2 GB of RAM, one company registered in Romania.

So there is one process and one database: Fastify, Drizzle and PostgreSQL, a React SPA, Docker Compose. No queue, no cache server, no microservices. Chat runs over server-sent events with an in-memory bus, which is enough for one container. Aggregation happens in SQL, not in JavaScript over large arrays.

Romania comes first because that is where the invoices are. e-Factura is mandatory here, so the ANAF connector, the UBL builder and the VAT declarations came early and are thorough. The app exists because of them.

Connectors keep the country-specific parts at the edge. The tax authority, the bank and external products each sit behind an interface in backend/src/connectors, and nothing outside that folder knows which platform it is talking to.

Access is a catalog, checked at startup. Every route must resolve to exactly one feature in features.ts or be declared self, public or machine. A route that does not resolve stops the server from starting, and so does one registered without authentication and not declared public. A new endpoint cannot ship unguarded by accident.

It serves a single company, so there is no tenant isolation. Roles and features decide what each colleague sees.

Adapting it to another country

The neutral modules work as they are. To use the money side elsewhere you would replace:

1. the accounting connector (connectors/anaf) with your tax authority's e-invoicing API, or none;
2. the declaration builders (connectors/anaf/declarations);
3. the exchange-rate source (shared/lib/bnr.ts);
4. the contract templates, which are Romanian legal text.

Start with docs/CONNECTOR_GUIDE.md. Pull requests are not accepted for now (see CONTRIBUTING.md), but an issue saying which country you need helps.

Run it locally

You need Docker, Node 22+ and pnpm 9+.

git clone https://github.com/Vanadium-Systems/vana-dash.git
cd vana-dash
pnpm install
cp .env.example .env

Set the three required values in .env:

ADMIN_PASSWORD=          # at least 12 characters
JWT_SECRET=              # openssl rand -base64 48
MASTER_ENCRYPTION_KEY=   # openssl rand -hex 32

Then:

./dev start              # postgres, backend on :3001, frontend on :5174; migrates and seeds
./dev db seed:demo en    # optional: invented clients, invoices, prospects, messages (en or ro)

Open http://localhost:5174 and sign in with ADMIN_EMAIL and ADMIN_PASSWORD from .env. The first start takes a couple of minutes because the containers install their dependencies.

The demo seed also switches off the scheduled jobs that poll Romanian public sources (BNR exchange rates, the SICAP procurement portal) and the bank. Without it they are on; turn them off under Settings if you do not need them.

./dev help lists the other commands (stop, logs, reset, db migrate). Every integration in .env.example is optional: left empty, that feature is off and the rest works.

The checks that must pass before a change is merged:

pnpm typecheck && pnpm lint && pnpm test && pnpm build

The backend tests run against the local PostgreSQL from ./dev start.

Status

In production since mid-2026, used daily by its author and a few colleagues.

• The interface is in Romanian and English. Each person picks a language and a display currency in My profile; DEFAULT_LOCALE sets what a new installation starts in. Invoices, declarations and contract templates stay in Romanian. Terms are in docs/GLOSSARY.md.
• Code comments are mostly in Romanian too. New code and all public documentation are written in English; older comments are translated as the files are touched.
• Not planned for now: multi-company hosting on one instance, video calls.

License

VanaDash is licensed under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0. You may read, run and modify it for personal use, study, research, and inside non-profit, educational or public organisations. You may not use it commercially, which includes running it for a business or selling it, without a separate licence from Vanadium Systems.

The name and logo are not covered by that licence: see TRADEMARKS.md.

Want this for your company?

Tell me what you need. The app was shaped by one Romanian company's work, so for another company or another country the first step is a conversation about your invoicing rules, your bank and the tools you want to replace. A commercial licence, a hosted instance or custom work are all possible; which one makes sense depends on that conversation.

Write to contact@vanadium.systems.

Contributing and security

Pull requests are not accepted for now; issues are. CONTRIBUTING.md says why and how the code is kept. Report vulnerabilities privately, as described in SECURITY.md.