Finance: Audit-Ready Books with eTIMS

KRA's eTIMS (electronic Tax Invoice Management System) made every Kenyan business an extension of the revenue authority. Every tax invoice now has to be electronically captured with a CU (Control Unit) number and QR code, transmitted to KRA, and retained for audit.

Papyrus's EtimsService integrates this directly into the invoicing workflow.

What Papyrus does automatically

When you issue an invoice in Papyrus:

1. The invoice template is populated with mandatory eTIMS fields (taxpayer PIN, customer PIN, line items, tax components)
2. On finalisation, Papyrus submits to KRA's eTIMS endpoint
3. The CU invoice number and QR code are returned and embedded into the PDF
4. The compliant invoice is sent to the customer with audit trail intact
5. The eTIMS reference is stored as searchable metadata on the document

For received invoices, Papyrus validates that vendor invoices have eTIMS references before allowing payment approval.

The audit-ready posture

What does “audit-ready” mean in eTIMS terms?

• Every tax invoice issued in the period has a corresponding KRA submission record
• Every received tax invoice over the threshold has a valid eTIMS reference
• Every credit note traces back to its original invoice
• The audit log shows when each invoice was submitted, by whom, and KRA's response
• VAT computations match the line-item extraction

What changes for the Finance team

The Finance team's daily activity becomes:

• Less: data entry into iTax, manual reconciliation, chasing PIN numbers
• More: exception handling for invoices KRA rejects, reconciliation of edge cases, strategic supplier negotiation

The reporting Papyrus generates

For a given period, Papyrus reports:

• Total invoices issued, by customer
• Total VAT collected
• Total invoices received, by supplier
• Total VAT paid (input)
• VAT due to KRA (net)
• Outstanding eTIMS submission errors (with the offending invoices linked)

Export to Excel or PDF, hand to your auditor, sleep well.

Related reading

• Finance: Invoice Capture and Three-Way Matching
• M-Pesa, KRA and Compliance: A Finance Team Primer
• Audit Readiness in 30 Days