The Electronic Tax Invoice Regulations 2024 for firms
What Kenya's Electronic Tax Invoice Regulations 2024 require of a firm's clients, from invoice contents and stock records to outages and exclusions.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in Kenya
Most Kenyan clients know eTIMS as something KRA wants them to use. Fewer know that the detailed rules sit in a specific legal instrument: the Tax Procedures (Electronic Tax Invoice) Regulations, 2024. When a client's invoice is challenged, a system goes down, or a shop closes, it is the regulations that say what should have happened.
A firm reviewing a client's compliance needs those rules at its fingertips. This article goes through what the regulations require, in the order a client meets them in practice: making each sale, what the invoice shows, stock, breakdowns and closures, and what falls outside the regime. It ends with how Achekam surfaces unfiscalised documents during a review.
The core duty for every sale
Regulations 3 and 4, which commenced on 28 March 2024, require every person carrying on business, unless exempted under section 23A of the Tax Procedures Act, to do four things for each sale:
- Record the sale in the system.
- Generate an invoice for the sale through the system.
- Give the invoice to the buyer.
- Transmit the invoice details to the Commissioner.
The four verbs are a useful test in a client review. A client that types an invoice in its own accounting package and later "registers" a summary in eTIMS is not generating the invoice through the system. A client that issues invoices but never transmits them has done three out of four.
What each invoice must show
Regulation 7(1) lists the contents of an electronic tax invoice. Grouped for a reviewer:
| Group | Required details |
|---|---|
| Parties | The seller's PIN; the buyer's PIN where the buyer will claim the expense or input tax |
| Timing and numbering | Time and date; serial number |
| Amounts | Gross amount and tax amount; tax rate |
| The items | Item code, description, quantity, unit of measure |
| System identifiers | Unique system and invoice identifiers; a QR code |
The buyer's PIN line deserves attention, because it is tied to the buyer's own claim for the expense or input tax. Credit and debit notes have their own rule: under regulation 7(2), they must refer to the original invoice number.
The full text of the regulations is on Kenya Law's page for the 2024 regulations, covering who must issue electronic tax invoices, invoice contents, transmission, stock records and the excluded transactions.
Stock-in and stock-out records
Regulation 4(3)(c) requires users to keep stock-in and stock-out records in the system, recording each local purchase and import. Before closing the business, a user must notify the Commissioner in writing of current stock within thirty days.
For trading clients, this is where eTIMS reaches beyond the sales ledger. Purchases and imports need to be in the system, not only in the client's own books, so that stock in the system reflects reality.
When the system fails, and when it stops
Failures
Regulation 5 deals with breakdowns. A user who cannot use the system must notify the Commissioner in writing within twenty-four hours, record sales by other means the Commissioner specifies, and enter those sales into the system once it is restored. The written notice is easy to overlook, and without it a gap in invoices is hard to explain.
Discontinuing
Under regulation 6(2), a user must notify the Commissioner in writing thirty days before discontinuing the system, or within seven days after an unplanned business closure. The same regulation requires the system to be kept available at the point of sale, open to inspection and updated, with a maintenance ledger.
What the regulations exclude
Regulation 10 takes some transactions outside the electronic tax invoice requirement altogether:
- emoluments;
- imports;
- investment allowances, including internal accounting adjustments;
- airline passenger ticketing;
- interest;
- financial institutions' fees;
- expenses subject to a final withholding tax; and
- services from non-residents without a permanent establishment in Kenya.
An exclusion applies to the transaction, whoever is involved. An exemption, by contrast, applies to a person, and is a separate route explained in eTIMS exemption for income through payment platforms.
Using Achekam in client reviews
Achekam treats fiscalisation as something that must be evidenced, not assumed.
Recording fiscalisation. Without a live eTIMS connection, a Kenyan business issues the invoice through another eTIMS channel, such as eTIMS Lite, eTIMS Client or an approved third-party integrator. It then records the control-unit invoice number, internal data and receipt signature in Achekam, and a second person verifies them. Only then does the invoice count as fiscalised.
What the document shows. Achekam prints eTIMS identifiers on an invoice only once it is fiscalised; otherwise the document says it is not yet fiscalised. A sandbox submission is labelled as test only.
The unfiscalised list. A Kenyan VAT return in Achekam lists the period's invoices, credit notes and till sales that are not fiscalised. It does not block the return; it shows the reviewer what needs explaining. For a client's return computed from imported schedules, the check is not applicable, so those clients need a separate comparison of their sales records against eTIMS; see reconciling eTIMS schedules and client VAT returns from schedules.
A review checklist for each client
- Does every sale go through the system, using all four steps?
- Do sample invoices carry every regulation 7(1) detail, including the buyer's PIN where needed?
- Do credit and debit notes refer to the original invoice number?
- Are local purchases and imports recorded as stock-in?
- Is there a written notice for every system outage, and were the sales entered afterwards?
- Has the client planned any closure or change of system with the required notice?
- Are transactions treated as excluded genuinely within regulation 10?
- Has the unfiscalised list for the period been cleared or explained?
Where to start
Take one month of a client's invoices and run the first three questions against a sample. The answers show quickly whether the client understands the regulations or is just using the software.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
