What you are actually agreeing to
When a station gives a company an account, it is lending that company the cost of the fuel for the length of the payment terms. On a regulated fuel margin, the cost of that lending is not trivial, and it is entirely invisible unless somebody measures it. A large customer who pays in ninety days and a large customer who pays in fourteen are different propositions at the same price per litre.
The volume is genuinely valuable, though. Fleet business is steady, predictable and largely immune to a competitor opening across the road, which is exactly what a station on a capped margin needs. The point is not to avoid credit; it is to run it as a deliberate arrangement rather than an accumulation of favours.
The failure mode is almost never a company refusing to pay. It is a station that cannot prove what was supplied. A driver fills up, a supervisor waves it through, a note goes in a book, and six weeks later the company queries a figure nobody can substantiate. The station usually concedes, because it cannot show the record.
That is why credit and eTIMS belong in the same conversation. The compliant invoice raised at the moment of the fill is both the tax document and the evidence, and a station that issues it at the pump rarely has a collection argument at all.
- A named account with the registered name and KRA PIN, captured before first use
- Authorised vehicles by registration number, and authorised drivers
- A credit limit the system enforces, not one held in somebody’s memory
- A compliant invoice raised at each fill, not at month end
- A monthly statement whose lines each have an invoice behind them
- Somebody named as responsible for collection
Want to see it running in your own business first?
Sign UpRunning a fleet account properly
Six steps from opening an account to getting paid.
- 1
Open the account before the first fill
Registered name, KRA PIN, physical address, a named contact in accounts and agreed payment terms in writing. Capturing this while a driver waits at the pump is how PINs get guessed and terms get assumed, and both come back at month end.
- 2
Authorise vehicles, not just the company
Record the registration numbers permitted to draw on the account, and the drivers if the customer wants that control. A registration number on every line ends most disputes before they start, because the customer can check it against their own records.
- 3
Set a limit and let the system hold it
A limit that lives in the owner’s head is not a limit, because the decision actually gets made by whoever is on shift when the account is already over. Put the figure on the account and let the system flag it, so an exception is a deliberate call rather than an accident.
- 4
Invoice at the pump, every time
The compliant invoice is raised as the vehicle is filled, against the account, carrying the buyer PIN and the vehicle. This is the single highest-value habit in the whole arrangement: it is the tax document, the evidence and the balance entry in one action.
- 5
Send statements on a fixed day
A statement that arrives on the same date every month gets processed in the customer’s normal run. An irregular one waits for somebody to look at it. Each line should reference an invoice the customer can match to their own fuel records.
- 6
Measure days to pay, per account
Track how long each account actually takes, not what the terms say. That figure tells you which relationships are worth the working capital and which need a conversation, and it feeds straight into your [cash flow forecast](/tools/cash-flow-forecast-calculator).
How station credit goes wrong
Credit extended at the pump with nothing recorded
A regular driver, a helpful supervisor, no entry anywhere. This is the most common money-side hole on a Kenyan station, it is rarely dishonest, and it is fully recoverable the moment it exists on paper. It is also entirely preventable by making the invoice part of the fill.
No limit, so the exposure is discovered at month end
Without an enforced limit, an account grows quietly until the statement arrives and the number is uncomfortable. By then the fuel is gone and the conversation is much harder than it would have been at the halfway point.
Reconstructing invoices from a signature book
Month-end reconstruction produces documents nobody trusts, dated wrongly, often missing vehicles. Customers query them, and the station cannot defend a figure it wrote down six weeks after the event.
Nobody owns collection
When chasing payment is everybody’s job it is nobody’s, and receivables drift. Name the person, give them the statement on a fixed day, and give them a days-to-pay figure per account to work from.
A worked example: the same customer, two arrangements
A hypothetical station serves a distribution company running a dozen vans. Under the first arrangement, drivers fill up and sign a book at the pump. At month end somebody totals the book, writes an invoice for the total and sends it. The company queries two entries it cannot match to its own trip records, the station cannot substantiate them, and both are written off. Payment arrives around seventy days later, and nobody has noticed that is happening because nobody measures it.
Under the second, the account is opened properly with the registered name, PIN and twelve authorised registration numbers, and a limit is set. Each fill produces a compliant invoice at the pump carrying the vehicle. The statement goes out on the fifth of every month with a line per fill.
The queries stop, because the company can match every line to a van and a date from its own records. The write-offs stop with them. And because days to pay is now visible, the station can have an informed conversation about terms rather than discovering at year end that its best customer has been using it as a credit facility. Same customer, same price per litre, materially different business.
Trading without eTIMS-compliant tax invoices risks KRA penalties, blocked VAT input claims for your customers, and receipts a business buyer cannot expense.
Veira signs every sale to KRA eTIMS automatically, so each receipt is compliant the moment it prints, with no separate device to reconcile.
How Veira runs station accounts
Veira holds each fleet or corporate account with its registered name, KRA PIN and contact, and attaches it to a sale at the counter or the pump. The compliant eTIMS invoice is produced at that moment, the balance moves, and the vehicle can be recorded on the line so the customer can match it to their own records.
Limits sit on the account rather than in somebody’s memory, statements are produced per account on your schedule, and days to pay is reported per customer so you can see which relationships are costing you working capital.
Veira does not assess anyone’s creditworthiness, guarantee collection or make lending decisions for you. It records what was supplied, to whom, against what authority, and what is outstanding. See the customer management page for fuel stations.
Frequently asked questions
Should a fuel station offer credit at all?
When should the invoice be raised on a credit fill?
How do I stop informal credit at the pump?
Should I record vehicle registration numbers?
What credit limit should I set?
How do I know if an account is costing me money?
Does Veira decide who gets credit?
Fleet credit is a loan you make out of a thin, capped margin. Open the account properly, invoice at the pump, hold a limit and measure days to pay, and it becomes the steadiest volume on your site. Book a free Veira demo and bring your current account list.
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