Accounting Behind Tebasan: Cost, Risk, and Price Construction in Durian Trading

Denny Kurnia; Denny Putri Hapsari; Amarul Amarul; Wahyuddin Wahyuddin

doi:10.61255/jeemba.v4i6.1980

Authors

Denny Kurnia Universitas Serang Raya, Indonesia
Denny Putri Hapsari Universitas Serang Raya, Indonesia
Amarul Universitas Serang Raya, Indonesia
Wahyuddin Universitas Serang Raya, Indonesia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.61255/jeemba.v4i6.1980

Keywords:

Management Accounting, Price, Risk, Tebasan System, Vernacular Accounting

Abstract

Purpose – This study explains how pre-harvest estimates become management-accounting objects in durian tebasan transactions and how calculative information is shared, negotiated, and later separated across orchard-owner and trader boundaries.

Design/methodology/approach – An exploratory qualitative case study uses ten informant records from Serang, Banten, but does not treat their evidentiary depth as symmetric. Three verbatim transcripts (T4, T5, P5) provide deep/direct evidence; condensed notes (T1–T3, P1) provide supporting case evidence; and owner-side transaction accounts (P2–P4) provide illustrative transaction evidence. Cross-case thematic analysis and one matched P4–T5 dyad are used with an explicit source-to-theme evidence matrix.

Finding/Results – Experience-based estimation, selective relevant costs, payment safeguards, and residual-value recovery are supported at different evidentiary depths. In the matched P4–T5 case, orchard-stage estimates, actual harvest, contract value, and major costs agree, while downstream figures differ. T5's reported arithmetic reaches Rp85.55 million, but damaged-fruit classification is not physically reconciled. The dyad is therefore consistent with, but does not establish, a provisional accounting-boundary asymmetry mechanism.

Originality/Value – The study's bounded contribution is a staged calculative coupling proposition: uncertain biological signals are temporarily converted into shared-enough calculative objects without a common accounting infrastructure, after which ex post visibility may become actor-specific as control rights shift. A temporal quality–risk calculus is retained as a narrower proposition. An unvalidated one-page transaction-record prototype is provided as a future managerial intervention requiring co-design and field testing.

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