KRA eTIMS requirements for Kenyan businesses

The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) requires VAT-registered businesses to issue electronic tax invoices through the Electronic Tax Invoice Management System (eTIMS). Requirements, deadlines, and exemptions are set by KRA and do change, so always confirm your current obligations on KRA’s official iTax/eTIMS channels rather than relying on any third party, including this page.

What stays fairly constant across implementations is the technical shape of compliance: every sale needs to be fiscalised with the correct VAT treatment, and the business needs to be registered with KRA to get the credentials that let a system talk to eTIMS.

What a business typically needs

A KRA PIN/TIN for the business, a registered branch identifier (bhfId) for each physical location transacting, and eTIMS API credentials (consumer key/secret and CMC key) issued once the branch is registered with KRA.

Products also need the correct VAT treatment configured — standard-rated, zero-rated, exempt, non-VAT, or the special rate that applies to petroleum products — so each sale is taxed correctly rather than defaulting to one rate for everything.

How Rafiki handles it

Once your TIN, branch ID, and eTIMS credentials are configured, Rafiki fiscalises every sale automatically and applies the correct tax band per product, with standard end-of-day (Z) and mid-shift (X) reports for reconciliation.

If eTIMS is briefly unreachable, sales continue and are fiscalised once connectivity to KRA is restored — the till doesn’t stop working because of a network blip.