eTIMS integration, explained

If you sell goods or services in Kenya, eTIMS — KRA’s electronic Tax Invoice Management System — isn’t optional. Every tax invoice has to be transmitted to KRA and stamped before it’s valid. Done badly, that’s a compliance risk and a slow checkout. Done right, the customer never even notices. Here’s how we approach it across Corebalt POS and Corebalt ERP.

What eTIMS actually requires

At its core, eTIMS means:

• Each invoice is sent to KRA at the point of sale, not batched up later.
• KRA returns a control unit invoice number (CU) and a verifiable QR code.
• That CU and QR must appear on the receipt you hand the customer.
• Your sales records and KRA’s records must reconcile, line by line.

The hard part: doing it in real time

A till can’t freeze while it waits on an external API. Our integration signs and transmits the invoice in the background and handles the realities of a live network:

• Idempotent submission — a retried invoice never double-files.
• Resilient queueing — if connectivity drops, sales continue and invoices transmit the moment the link is back, in order.
• Reconciliation — a scheduled job compares local sales against KRA’s records and flags any gaps for a human, instead of letting them rot silently.

This is the same philosophy we bring to M-Pesa integration — the easy demo is the API call; the real product is everything around the failure cases.

Built in, not bolted on

Because compliance lives in the shared Corebalt core, eTIMS receipts are automatic in POS and ERP alike — no separate middleware, no manual exports. And the same invoicing engine extends to VAT and e-invoicing regimes in other markets as you grow.

Want compliant receipts that don’t slow you down? Book a demo and we’ll show you the full flow.