The Receipt Your Customer Could Not Claim
A VAT-registered customer buys from you every month, and none of it shows up in their iTax purchases. The PIN was on their customer record the whole time. Since this release it travels with the document: invoices, POS sales and credit notes for a customer with a valid KRA PIN are filed to eTIMS as business-to-business supplies.
An office supplies distributor in Industrial Area sells paper, toner and furniture to forty law firms and accounting practices. In March, one of those firms’ accountants rings with a question nobody at the distributor can answer: why do none of your invoices appear in our iTax purchases? The firm had paid VAT on every one of them, and could not claim a shilling of it back.
The answer was in the filing, not the invoice. The distributor’s invoices were going to eTIMS correctly, on time, with the right tax — and every one of them was going as a sale to a consumer. The buyer’s KRA PIN sat on the customer record, typed in when the account was opened, and nothing ever sent it.
What the buyer PIN does
An eTIMS document carries a field for the buyer’s PIN. Filled in, KRA treats the document as a supply from one business to another: it lands in the buyer’s own purchases on iTax, and the buyer can claim the input VAT on it. Left empty, the document is a consumer sale. The tax you charged is the same either way. What changes is whether the business that paid it can recover it.
Until this release, every eTIMS document AWRA filed for a customer left that field empty. Now the KRA PIN in the customer’s VAT & Tax Settings is sent as the buyer PIN on three kinds of document:
- Customer invoices, filed when they are issued — not when they are drafted, and not when they are paid.
- POS sales where a customer is chosen at the till. A walk-in sale with no customer stays a consumer sale, as it should.
- Credit notes, which carry the PIN of the customer on the invoice, the POS sale or the credit note they reverse, so a reversal lands on the same side of the buyer’s ledger as the sale did.
The tax on the receipt is the same either way. What changes is whether the business that paid it can get it back.
Why a bad PIN is left off rather than sent
PINs are typed by people, and people type them in every format: with spaces, with a hyphen in the middle, in lower case. Before a PIN is sent it is cleaned — spaces and hyphens stripped, letters uppercased — and then checked against the shape KRA issues: one letter, A for an individual or P for a business, then nine digits, then one letter. “p051 234567x” becomes P051234567X and goes through.
A PIN that still does not fit that shape after cleaning is not sent at all, and the document files as a consumer sale. That is a deliberate trade. KRA rejects the whole document when the buyer PIN is invalid, so sending a mistyped PIN would turn a filing that lands into one that bounces — and an unfiled invoice is a bigger problem than an invoice filed without the buyer’s PIN. Correct the PIN on the customer, and the next document files as business-to-business.
| On the customer record | What eTIMS receives |
|---|---|
| P051234567X | P051234567X — business-to-business |
| p051-234567x | P051234567X — cleaned, then sent |
| P05123456X (eight digits) | Nothing — consumer sale |
| Blank, or a walk-in sale | Nothing — consumer sale |
The fix at the distributor
The distributor exported its customer list and sorted it by the KRA PIN column. Thirty-four of the forty firms had a PIN in the right shape, and their invoices from that day on carried it. Four had a PIN with a digit missing or a letter where a number belonged, and two had none. The accounts team rang those six, corrected the records, and the following week’s invoices went through as business-to-business sales.
What was already filed stays filed
The PIN is read when a document is filed, so correcting it changes the next document, not the ones KRA has already accepted. Whether earlier consumer receipts should be credited and reissued to a business buyer is a question for your tax adviser, not a setting.
One habit makes the rest of this work: take the PIN when you open the account, not when the customer first complains. The customer’s VAT & Tax Settings already hold it beside their VAT registration; the Customers guide shows where. For how filing works end to end — the moment of issue, credit note reversals, the single eTIMS number sequence — see eTIMS & Tax and the eTIMS feature page.
Three questions for whoever files your eTIMS
Does an invoice to a VAT-registered business carry their PIN to KRA?
A good answer sounds like
Yes, from the PIN on the customer record, on invoices, POS sales and credit notes.
What it tells you
Without it your business customers cannot claim the VAT they paid you.
What happens when the PIN on file is mistyped?
A good answer sounds like
It is cleaned, and if it still does not fit the KRA shape the document files as a consumer sale.
What it tells you
Sending a bad PIN gets the whole document rejected.
Does a credit note carry the same buyer PIN as the sale it reverses?
A good answer sounds like
Yes, from the same customer.
What it tells you
Otherwise the buyer’s purchases and your reversals stop agreeing.
What AWRA OpsHub does today
- The KRA PIN on a customer’s VAT & Tax Settings sent as the buyer PIN on eTIMS invoices, POS sales and credit notes.
- Cleaning before sending: spaces and hyphens stripped and letters uppercased.
- A shape check against one letter (A or P), nine digits and one letter, with anything else filed as a consumer sale so the document is never rejected for its PIN.
- Walk-in POS sales and customers with no PIN filed as consumer sales, as before.
More we can add to your workspace
- A check on the customer form that flags a PIN in the wrong shape the moment it is typed, rather than at filing.
- A lookup of each PIN against KRA’s own register, so a PIN that is well formed but belongs to nobody is caught too.
- Exempt supplies mapped to their own eTIMS tax category alongside VAT-rated and zero-rated ones.
Where we point you to a specialist
- Whether a buyer may claim the input VAT on a given purchase is between the buyer and KRA. We file the document correctly; we do not advise on anyone’s claim.
Anything above that you need, we can build for you
Everything listed above as something we can add describes what ships in the standard product today — it is a starting point, not a limit on what AWRA OpsHub can do for your organisation. Kenya's eTIMS integration and its maintained payroll engine are both in the product because clients needed them and commissioned them; neither appeared by itself, and the same door is open for whatever you just read about. One qualification so this is worth what it claims: a small number of things on this blog we deliberately leave to a specialist rather than build — a statutory ledger we will not sign our name to, a rule that would decide a tax question for you, a clinical or member-funds record that belongs in a regulated system — and where that is true the post says so in those words. Everything else is a scope, a timeline and a price.
The operational work, which is what most commissions actually are
An extra approval stage in a chain that does not match the standard one, a custom field set on employees or assets that only your sector needs, an expiry that has to block an order rather than send an email, a report your board asks for in a shape nothing produces, or a scanner or weighbridge feeding the goods-in door. These are the commissions we are asked for most often and the smallest ones we quote — and unlike a revenue-authority pipeline, none of them waits on a regulator.
The module-shaped additions, which are the ones readers ask for most often
A price list with real discount authority, a customer-facing quotation that expires, a bill of materials or recipe costing, a staff advance that is issued, acquitted and chased, a member or unit ledger, a matching rule that holds a payment. Each of these is a build rather than a setting, and each has been quoted before — a bigger piece of work than a custom field, with a written spec and a date instead of a roadmap slide.
The report, document or pack nothing currently produces
The board pack in the shape your board actually asks for, a donor or funder layout, an invoice or receipt template carrying what your regulator or your customer expects, a dataset the report builder cannot reach yet. Usually the fastest thing on this list to deliver, because the data is already in the system.
Systems, rails and hardware you already run
The accounting package, CRM, online store, core banking or custom database you intend to keep — connected through our API so a fact is entered once and appears everywhere it is needed. Plus the physical edge: a scanner, a scale, a weighbridge or a till peripheral feeding the door it belongs to.
How it works: you describe the requirement, we return a written scope, timeline and cost, and once agreed it is built into your environment and maintained as part of the product. Nothing here waits on a regulator or a published specification, which is why operational builds are the ones we quote fastest. Tell us the requirement that would otherwise rule us out — that is a better first conversation than a demo.
Tell us what your operation needsCheck your customers’ PINs
The eTIMS guide covers what is filed, when, and how the buyer PIN is chosen.
eTIMS & Tax guideFrequently asked questions
Where does AWRA get the buyer PIN for an eTIMS filing?
From the KRA PIN saved in the customer’s VAT and tax settings. It is read when the document is filed.
Which documents carry the buyer PIN?
Customer invoices, POS sales with a customer chosen, and credit notes, which take the PIN of the customer on the document they reverse.
What if the PIN on file is typed with spaces or in lower case?
Spaces and hyphens are stripped and letters uppercased before it is checked, so P051 234567x is sent as P051234567X.
What happens to an invoice when the customer PIN is wrong?
If the PIN is not one letter (A or P), nine digits and a letter after cleaning, it is left off and the invoice files as a consumer sale. KRA would reject the whole document for an invalid buyer PIN.
Does correcting a PIN change invoices already filed?
No. The corrected PIN is used for the next documents filed. Documents KRA has already accepted stay as they were filed.
