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.
- Accounting & taxAugust 25, 2026
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.
Taro — Founder, KAZENARead the post - Accounting & taxAugust 24, 2026
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.
Taro — Founder, KAZENARead the post - Accounting & taxAugust 23, 2026
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.
Taro — Founder, KAZENARead the post - Accounting & taxAugust 22, 2026
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.
Taro — Founder, KAZENARead the post - Accounting & taxAugust 21, 2026
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.
Taro — Founder, KAZENARead the post - Accounting & taxJuly 28, 2026
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.
Taro — Founder, KAZENARead the post - Accounting & taxJuly 25, 2026
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.
Taro — Founder, KAZENARead the post - Accounting & taxJuly 24, 2026
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.
Taro — Founder, KAZENARead the post - Company & moreJuly 20, 2026
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.
Taro — Founder, KAZENARead the post - Accounting & taxJuly 18, 2026
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.
Taro — Founder, KAZENARead the post - Company & moreJuly 17, 2026
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.
Kei — KAZENA teamRead the post - Accounting & taxJuly 17, 2026
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.
Taro — Founder, KAZENARead the post