Notes from the founder
Occasional notes from the KAZENA team — Taro and the people building alongside him — about Indonesia, the Philippines, and running a small business here.
September 11, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
We folded the 5 rows that worked, and they read as gone
The import preview was built to list only the rows that needed attention. On a file of 6 rows just 1 appeared, and the other 5 read as having vanished.
Read the postSeptember 10, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
One line said: anywhere but Japan, return 0
Only the entries saved from a photograph were throwing the input tax away, folding the whole tax-inclusive amount into the expense. The cause was 1 line I wrote when the country branch went in: if it is not Japan, return 0.
Read the postSeptember 9, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
We wrote “estimated” on every field
Above the receipt reading we wrote 1 line: this content was estimated by AI. The fields we called estimates were the certain ones, and the fields we had actually decided ourselves carried no mark at all.
Read the postSeptember 8, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
Choosing the form was never the user's job
At the top of the screen we had lined up 4 abbreviations: BPMP, BP21, BPPU, BPA1. Someone asked which one to choose, and the question showed that making anyone choose was the mistake.
Read the postSeptember 7, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
The time we were spending was hers
At the end of August I counted the times she had tested for us. The number was 22. This is a note about what we can return to someone who gives us her time for nothing, starting with what we have not returned yet.
Read the postSeptember 6, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
The numbers we invented belonged to no one
The numbers we generated had the right digit count and a valid check digit. Even so, 12 of our 41 test cases stopped. What the office was looking at was not the shape of the number but whether anyone owned it.
Read the postSeptember 5, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
The paper already says what you owe
Reading the Philippine rules showed me that the single field in our books for whether you are registered for value added tax cannot produce an answer. Two businesses of the same size in the same trade can sit in different regimes, depending on a choice.
Read the postSeptember 4, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
The rule we wrote in 2 places
One set of books had 2 invoices carrying the same number. The place that decides the shape of a number and the place that decides when it resets were written separately, and in June I changed only one of them. Between 1 July and 20 August, 58 invoices collided.
Read the postSeptember 3, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
A field you can type in is a permission
It started with 1 line: please remove the PPN field. We did not remove it — we stopped it being typed by hand. Of 449 sets of books that are not registered for PPN, 37 had put a number in that field, and in 9 of them the number was withholding tax.
Read the postSeptember 2, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
Every table wanted a different press
Some of our tables open wherever you press the row; some work only on the text. One line from a teammate sent me counting: 10 list screens, 4 different conventions. Going back over 3 months of messages, I found 6 reports we had misread.
Read the postSeptember 1, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
The day it said Disimpan
On the afternoon of 14 August, Coretax accepted a file we had generated, for the first time. It had rejected us 27 times before that. Here is every place we fell over.
Read the postAugust 31, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
The gate we never wrote
A feature we listed in the paid column had no plan check in the code at all. For 130 days it has been running on free accounts exactly as it does on paid ones. We did not take it back — we made it free and corrected the price page instead.
Read the postAugust 30, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
Too ordinary for anyone to mention
Today marks 1 month in Jakarta. Almost everything useful I have learned here appears in no manual — not hidden, just too ordinary for anyone to think of saying. The invoice we were printing was not yet a document in this country.
Read the postAugust 29, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
Our year-to-date began where our records did
The field labelled year-to-date was counting only the payments recorded in our own ledger. Across 23 ledgers that started partway through the year, the withholding falls short by 41,200,000 rupiah in total.
Read the postAugust 28, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
Whose today was it
Our server changes its date 7 hours before Jakarta does. For those 7 hours, what a person entered as today we stored as yesterday. 488 entries of it, and 19 that crossed into the wrong month.
Read the postAugust 27, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
Silent at the entrance, locked at the exit
Every entry was correct, and still the export button sat grey and said nothing. What was missing were 2 fields on another screen, and the manual covers them. The person who had not read it was not the one at fault.
Read the postAugust 26, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
The default was still choosing Japan
In June we removed Japan from the countries we serve, and yet 41 of the 47 accounts created through the Google button after that were still born as Japanese ledgers. What I had changed was the sign in the shop window, not the contents of the warehouse.
Read the postAugust 25, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
The same account, under 2 names
V sent me a profit-and-loss statement where account 6220 appeared on 2 rows under 2 different names, splitting one total into 4,120,000 and 1,860,000 rupiah. We had been saving the label instead of the fact.
Read the postAugust 24, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
Withholding is not a tax on the payment; it is a tax on the year
The same person was paid 150,000,000 rupiah twice, and our software withheld the same amount the second time as the first. The correct figure is the tax on the cumulative base minus what has already been withheld. The gap was 6,000,000 rupiah.
Read the postAugust 23, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
I was designing at the wrong width
E sent me a photograph of his phone with our save button falling off the bottom edge. I had been checking at 390px; his device is 360px wide. Eleven screens' worth of oversights were hiding in those 30 pixels.
Read the postAugust 22, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
The first trap was the template we handed out
Someone in the Philippines who uses KAZENA Books wrote to say that May's expenses had suddenly grown. Of 284 rows, 187 never arrived and 93 sat in the wrong month — and the cause was the Excel template we hand out ourselves.
Read the postAugust 21, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
A zero is not a number
Three weeks into Jakarta. An accountant here tested KAZENA Books with her real data, and the 0 someone had put in a tax-ID field was quietly merging two different people into one — a year-end certificate showing 3 times a person's real income, with no warning at all.
Read the postJuly 28, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
We decided not to build inventory management
A pet shop owner's feedback was hard to hear and completely right. Facing up to retail, we chose not to build inventory management at all — and to work instead on the true cost of a product, and on why import VAT and PPh 22 must never be part of it.
Read the postJuly 25, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
BIR for a small business in the Philippines, without the panic
For small-business owners and freelancers in the Philippines, 'BIR' can bring a quiet dread. A few honest notes: what the BIR actually asks of you, the one choice that makes tax far simpler for small earners, and why clean books all year turn filing season into an afternoon.
Read the postJuly 24, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
Facing Coretax without the dread
Since Coretax went live, tax has become a fresh worry for small-business owners in Indonesia. A few honest notes: what Coretax actually is, the handful of things you truly need to keep straight, and why clean books all year make tax season far lighter.
Read the postJuly 20, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
Our fifth product, and the friend who designed all of it
Today the foundation of our fifth product came together — a household-finance app for everyday life. But the one who imagined all of it wasn't me; it was my Indonesian comrade, who has been beside me since the very beginning.
Read the postJuly 18, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
What our free plan really means — and a teammate who came back
Why KAZENA Books has a free plan. I want to give founders their time back — that wish, and something that happened today that made me genuinely happy.
Read the postJuly 17, 2026 · Kei — KAZENA team
The lunch rush, and a system that eases it
At lunchtime, a small eatery can turn into a battlefield: orders piling up, change to count, mistakes under pressure. A note on how QR ordering and digital payment can lighten the busiest hours.
Read the postJuly 17, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
Getting ready for tax season, without the last-minute panic
For many small-business owners, tax season means digging through a box of receipts the night before the deadline. A note on turning taxes into a calm ten minutes instead of a lost weekend.
Read the postJuly 17, 2026 · Kei — KAZENA team
Is your business really making a profit?
Many owners feel busy and see money moving all day, yet aren't sure whether they're actually profitable. A note on the single most important number for a small business — and why it isn't revenue.
Read the postJuly 17, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
Bookkeeping for a small business, without the pain
I keep meeting small-business owners in Indonesia wrestling with a pile of receipts past midnight. A few honest notes on simple bookkeeping — what actually matters, and three small habits that lighten the load.
Read the postJuly 16, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
The real thing moves
Anime, food — and game centers. Japanese culture is crossing the sea faster than I expected. A note about our new product, KAZENA Amusement, and why a real machine moving is something no graphics can replace.
Read the postJuly 15, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
Work is not a solo game
My own ignorant mistake pushed KAZENA to the edge of survival. All of it was my fault. But some people hadn't given up. A story about Coach Anzai's famous line — and how I honestly feel right now.
Read the postJuly 12, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
Paying it back
What can I actually return to the two countries that carried me? On why we keep building plain, unglamorous software — and on the Japanese owners working hard in Indonesia and the Philippines.
Read the postJuly 2, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
What Manila taught me
The traffic really was terrible — I won't defend it. But almost every other memory I have of the Philippines is about the warmth of its people, and a kind of strength they taught me.
Read the postJune 18, 2026 · Taro — Founder, KAZENA
In Jakarta, I was the one being helped
I landed without the language, without knowing a single street. What I remember most about my early days here is how often strangers helped me — and a phrase called gotong royong.
Read the post