Car Tax, พ.ร.บ., ID Card, Passport: An Idea for One App That Remembers Every Renewal, and Why We Want Your Feedback First

When did your car tax last expire? Your driving licence? Your mother’s ID card? Most of us find out the same way: a sticker on the windscreen that’s already out of date, or an officer at a counter telling us the card in our hand expired last month.

None of these dates are hard. There are just too many of them, spread across too many years, for too many people in one family.

We’re Simplico, a software studio in Thailand. We have an idea for an app that fixes this, and we want to find out whether it’s worth building. simpliRenew is an idea, not a product. There’s no app yet and no technical design. This post describes what we’d build and asks you to tell us whether you’d use it.

Small dates, real costs

Forgetting a renewal in Thailand isn’t usually a disaster. It’s a slow leak of money, time and stress:

• Car tax: paying late adds 1% a month on the tax owed, and you can pay up to three months early. Leave it unpaid for three years and the registration is suspended, the plates are cancelled, and the car has to be registered again.
• พ.ร.บ. and car tax are linked. You can’t renew car tax without a valid compulsory motor insurance certificate, so if one lapses, the other is blocked.
• ID card: it’s valid for six years, and you should renew it within 60 days of expiry or face a small fine. The real cost is discovering the problem at a bank counter.
• For foreigners living in Thailand, the stakes are higher. Anyone staying more than 90 days must report their address every 90 days, and a late report starts at a 2,000-baht fine.

Add a passport, a driving licence, car insurance, a phone warranty and the aircon service, then multiply by a spouse and two parents. That’s a lot of dates for one person to carry.

The idea in one paragraph

You take a photo of anything with an expiry date: a tax sticker, an insurance policy, a licence, a receipt. The app reads the date and you confirm it. Before it expires, you get reminders at 60, 30 and 7 days, each one telling you what to bring, where to go, and how early you’re allowed to renew. When you’ve done it, you tap "Renewed" and it rolls over to the next cycle.

flowchart TD
    A["Photo of sticker policy card or receipt"] --> B["App reads the date and you confirm"]
    B --> C["Reminders at 60 30 and 7 days"]
    C --> D["Each reminder says what to bring and where to go"]
    D --> E{"Renewed"}
    E -->|"Yes"| F["Tap Renewed - next cycle starts"]
    E -->|"Not yet"| G["Daily nudge until done"]
    G --> E

What it would track

Category	Examples
Vehicle	Car tax, พ.ร.บ., voluntary insurance, vehicle inspection
Identity	ID card, driving licence, passport
Expat	90-day report, visa extension, work permit
Purchases (later)	Appliance and phone warranties, with the receipt saved
Maintenance (later)	Oil change, tyres, aircon cleaning, water filter

"My phone already has a calendar"

It does, and if a calendar works for you, keep using it. Here’s where we think a dedicated app could be better:

• It knows Thai rules. A calendar doesn’t know that car tax needs a valid พ.ร.บ., so the app would remind you about the พ.ร.บ. first. It would also know how early each item can be renewed.
• It’s built for families. One person usually tracks everything for the household. Shared items would let you get "Dad’s licence expires in 30 days" without managing Dad’s phone.
• It tells you what to do, not just when. A calendar entry says "car tax". A useful reminder says what to bring, which counter or website to use, and what happens if you’re late.
• Everything is in one place. Some insurers send reminders for their own policies. Nobody covers your ID card, passport, licence and warranties together.

Privacy: we only want the date

This is the design decision we feel most strongly about:

• No ID numbers, licence numbers or policy numbers stored. The app needs the type of document and its expiry date. Nothing else.
• Photos stay on your phone by default. The date is read on the device. Only the item type and date sync, so your reminders survive a phone change.
• Delete means delete. Remove an item and it’s gone.

What it is not

• It doesn’t renew anything for you. No payments, no submissions to government systems. It reminds you and tells you how.
• It isn’t legal advice. Rules change; we’d keep the guidance dated and sourced, and you should always check the official channel.

Where this idea stands

Item	Status
Reminders for vehicle, identity and expat items	Idea only
Reading the expiry date from a photo	Idea only
Family sharing	Idea only
Warranty vault and maintenance reminders	Later, if the core works
Paying renewals inside the app	Not planned
Pricing	Not decided — one of our questions

What we want to learn

1. Which of these have you actually missed? Car tax, พ.ร.บ., ID card, licence, passport, 90-day report, a warranty?
2. What did it cost you? A fine, a wasted trip, a refused claim, or just stress?
3. Would you track dates for other people? A spouse, parents, siblings?
4. Would you photograph documents into an app if it only stored the date? Or is that a deal-breaker either way?
5. What would you pay? Nothing; a small yearly fee; more for a family plan or an expat pack?
6. Is a calendar honestly enough for you? If so, tell us. That’s useful too.

How you can help

Answer even one question. Email hello@simplico.net with the subject "simpliRenew feedback", or message us on LINE at iiitum1984. "My calendar works fine" is as useful to us as "I need this yesterday."

Let us remind you by hand. Before writing any code, we want to run a small test with 20 people. Send us the type and expiry month of the things you want tracked — no document numbers, no photos — with the subject "simpliRenew early access". We’ll remind you by hand for two months, and you tell us whether the reminders actually made you act.

We’ll publish what we learn, including if the answer is "don’t build it".

FAQ

Is simpliRenew available?
No. It’s an idea we’re testing before committing to build it.

Will it renew my car tax or พ.ร.บ. for me?
No. It reminds you in time and tells you how to renew through the official channels.

Do you need my ID card number?
No. The app only needs the document type and expiry date. Numbers are never stored.

Is this for foreigners too?
Yes. An expat pack covering 90-day reports, visa extensions and work permits is part of the idea, and we’d especially like to hear from people living in Thailand on a visa.

Who is behind this?
Simplico, a software engineering studio based in Thailand. We mostly build systems for companies; this would be one of our first products for everyday users, so we’re asking everyday users first.