The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) is expanding the role of electronic invoicing in business recordkeeping.
In a public notice issued on 7 September 2026, KRA reminded businesses that they are required to maintain accurate and up-to-date stock records while using TIMS/eTIMS. These records should account for goods as they move through a business, including stock that is purchased or received, sold, transferred, returned, adjusted or otherwise disposed of. KRA has also announced stakeholder consultations on the implementation of the stock management functionality beginning in September 2026.
For Kenyan businesses, this makes organised inventory and supporting records increasingly important.
What is the eTIMS stock management functionality?
eTIMS, or the Electronic Tax Invoice Management System, is KRA’s electronic invoicing platform. KRA states that eTIMS includes a stock management module designed to help taxpayers maintain their inventory, alongside keeping records of invoices issued.
The latest KRA notice emphasises that stock records should accurately reflect how goods move through the business. This means businesses need to be able to account for more than simply what they have purchased and sold.
Transfers, returns, adjustments and other forms of disposal can also affect the stock position.
What stock movements should businesses be able to document?
Consider a simple example. A business purchases 1,000 units of a product. Its records show that 700 were sold and 100 remain in stock.
What happened to the remaining 200?
There could be a perfectly legitimate explanation. Some goods may have been transferred to another branch, returned to the supplier, damaged, written off or otherwise disposed of.
The important issue is whether the business has records that can explain what happened.
As KRA increasingly connects electronic invoicing with stock management, businesses should ensure that movements in their inventory are supported by accurate and retrievable documentation.
What records should businesses keep?
The precise documents required will depend on the nature of the business, but an effective records system should allow a company to trace transactions through the different stages of purchasing, receiving, storing and selling goods.
For purchases, this might include supplier invoices, purchase orders, delivery notes, goods received notes and payment records. Sales records can include eTIMS invoices, delivery documentation, credit notes and customer returns.
Inventory documentation may include stock registers, warehouse records, physical stock counts, branch transfer records, adjustment records and documentation supporting damaged, expired or written-off goods.
Financial records, including accounting ledgers, bank records, VAT documentation and tax returns, provide another layer of evidence.
These records should ultimately tell a consistent story.
This is particularly important because KRA already uses information transmitted through TIMS/eTIMS to prepopulate parts of VAT returns. KRA states, for example, that sales transmitted through TIMS/eTIMS cannot simply be reduced in the prepopulated VAT return, while missing sales must still be declared.
The challenge is often not creating records, but finding them
Many established businesses already generate most of this documentation.
The problem is that it may be scattered across different departments and systems.
Procurement might hold the purchase order. The warehouse has the goods received note. Finance keeps the invoice and payment record. The eTIMS transaction exists electronically, while the delivery documentation may be sitting in a physical archive.
For a company with several branches or warehouses, the problem becomes even more complicated.
If KRA requests supporting information several years later, simply knowing that a document once existed is not enough. The organisation needs to be able to retrieve it.
How long should tax records be retained?
Section 23 of Kenya’s Tax Procedures Act generally requires taxpayers to maintain documents needed to determine their tax liability and retain them for five years from the end of the reporting period to which they relate. Kenyan courts have also referred to this five-year recordkeeping requirement.
However, organisations should not treat five years as an automatic destruction date for every document. Records may need to be preserved for longer where they remain relevant to an ongoing audit, assessment, dispute or other legal requirement.
A proper retention schedule should therefore determine what is retained, why it is retained and when it can safely be destroyed.
How should businesses prepare?
The first step is to understand how stock information currently moves through the organisation. Businesses should review how purchases, receipts, sales, transfers, returns, adjustments and disposals are recorded and identify where the supporting evidence is kept.
Particular attention should be given to whether records from different departments can be reconciled. An invoice should not exist in isolation from the transaction it represents.
For organisations with large physical archives, frequently required documents can be digitised and indexed, while inactive originals can be securely stored off-site. Consistent naming, indexing and retention procedures across branches can also make retrieving historical transactions considerably easier.
How The Filing Room can help
The move towards electronic invoicing does not eliminate the need for records management. In many organisations, the evidence supporting an electronic transaction still exists across a combination of physical and digital records.
Our Registry Management and Consultancy services can also help organisations improve records that remain on-site through registry and inventory creation, embedded archivists and best-practice records management consultancy.
For businesses dealing with large volumes of purchasing, stock and sales documentation, the objective is simple: records should be organised so that a transaction can be traced and the supporting evidence retrieved when required.
Good records are becoming increasingly important
KRA’s September 2026 notice is another indication of the increasingly data-driven nature of tax administration in Kenya. KRA says accurate stock management is intended to support tax compliance and improve the accuracy of tax returns and reporting.
For businesses, this means compliance should extend beyond issuing the correct electronic invoice.
Good eTIMS compliance begins with being able to trace a transaction from purchase and receipt through to sale, transfer, return, adjustment or disposal.
The businesses best prepared for this environment will not necessarily be those creating the most paperwork. They will be those whose records are accurate, consistent, organised and easy to retrieve.
Read KRA’s official notice on the new stock management functionality
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