eTIMS for businesses with several branches or tills
How a Kenyan business with several branches or tills sets up eTIMS, keeps invoice numbers apart and handles credit notes, with a branch checklist.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Running a business businesses in Kenya
One shop with one till is simple: every sale goes through the same eTIMS set-up and the invoice numbers run in one line. Add a second branch, a third till for the weekend rush, or a delivery van that sells on the road, and the questions start. Does each branch need its own eTIMS? Can every till run the eTIMS Client? What happens when a customer returns goods to a different branch from the one that sold them?
KRA's guidance answers most of these, and the answers shape how you should organise branches and tills from the start. This article goes through them and ends with a checklist for opening a new branch.
What the eTIMS Client supports
KRA says the eTIMS Client supports multiple branches and cashier tills or pay points. A business does not have to choose a different eTIMS product just because it has grown beyond one counter.
KRA's page on types of eTIMS solutions describes each solution, including the eTIMS Client's support for branches and pay points, and how invoice sequences and credit notes work across solutions.
If you are still deciding which solution to use at all, start with choosing the right eTIMS solution.
The one-device rule for the eTIMS Client software
Here is the catch. KRA says the eTIMS Client software can only be installed on one device per taxpayer, though taxpayers can invoice on more than one solution. And KRA says changing devices within the eTIMS Client solution needs KRA's help.
Put together, those two statements mean a business should think carefully before choosing which machine carries the eTIMS Client. It is not something to install on the cashier's laptop in one branch and then move around. If the business needs invoicing points in several places, KRA's answer is that it can register on more than one eTIMS solution at the same time, without KRA's approval.
One way to arrange it is one solution at head office or the main branch and another solution elsewhere. Which combination suits you depends on whether each site sells goods or services and how reliable its internet is.
Separate invoice number sequences
Running more than one solution has a consequence for numbering. KRA says each eTIMS solution has its own unique invoice number sequence. Your main branch's invoices and the online portal's invoices will not share one running series.
That is not a problem in itself, but it needs planning:
- Keep a register of which solution each branch or till uses.
- Make sure staff know which sequence their invoices come from.
- Expect gaps in any one series to be explained by the other solutions, not by missing invoices.
KRA adds that all invoices from the different solutions can be seen on the taxpayer portal at etims.kra.go.ke, which is the place to look when reconciling the whole business.
Credit notes must come from the original solution
KRA says a credit note can only be generated from the solution where the original invoice was raised. This is the rule that catches multi-branch businesses most often.
Picture a customer who bought a fridge at the Nakuru branch and returns it to the Nairobi branch. If the two branches use different eTIMS solutions, Nairobi cannot raise the credit note; it has to come from whichever solution issued the original invoice. Your returns policy needs a step for that: either send returns back to the issuing branch's system, or give head office access to raise credit notes on every solution in use.
Achekam tills, receipt numbers and the branch day-close
On the till side, Achekam is built for more than one counter. Several tills can run at once, each opened at one of the business's stock locations, and the server hands out receipt numbers so two tills never share one. Every till sale that reaches the server posts a balanced journal in the same step, with each payment method to its own account, revenue, output VAT and cost of sales, so the branch's sales land in the books as they happen.
At the end of each day, a branch's business day is closed by a supervisor or manager who was not a cashier that day. Closing freezes the day's Z reports, payments, VAT by rate and differences. That frozen figure is what you compare with the eTIMS totals for the same branch.
What Achekam does not do yet is send sales to eTIMS itself. Achekam's OSCU connector does not transmit Kenyan invoices to KRA in production. That waits for KRA to certify the integration, an Achekam platform administrator to record that authorisation, and the business to initialise a production eTIMS device. Until then, each sale goes through the branch's eTIMS solution as well. For invoices issued that way, the business records in Achekam the control-unit invoice number, internal data and receipt signature that eTIMS returned, and a second person checks them before the invoice counts as fiscalised. The daily routine for matching the two is set out in fiscalising Kenyan till sales through eTIMS.
A set-up checklist for opening a new branch
- Decide the eTIMS solution for the branch and record it in your solutions register.
- Check the one-device rule before planning to install the eTIMS Client there.
- Set up the stock location for the branch in Achekam so its tills open against it.
- Agree who closes the branch day, someone who will not be cashiering.
- Write the returns rule for goods bought at another branch, so credit notes come from the right solution.
- Train staff on the sequence their invoices will carry.
- Plan the exit as well. If a branch closes or a device changes, see changing, retiring or stopping your eTIMS system.
Draw a simple map of every branch, till and eTIMS solution you use today. If you cannot draw it, neither can your staff, and that is where credit notes go wrong.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
