eTIMS for petrol stations in Kenya

Forecourt selling under eTIMS

Pumps measure litres dispensed in real time and report through the station's controller. eTIMS integration on a fuel station ties each measured dispense to a transmitted invoice: customer fills KES 2,000 of diesel, the pump reports, the POS or controller issues an eTIMS invoice for that sale.

Because most forecourt sales are B2C cash or M-Pesa, the workflow is fast and the buyer PIN is not required. The compliance step is invisible to the customer; the receipt they get already carries the KRA control number and QR code.

Fleet cards and corporate accounts

A fleet driver fills up using a fleet card or paper authorisation issued by a corporate buyer. The sale is B2B: the buyer is the corporate, the driver is just the authorised user. The eTIMS invoice needs to carry the corporate's KRA PIN, not the driver's.

Stations that issue fleet sales with the driver's name and no buyer PIN produce invoices the corporate cannot claim against, which leads to disputes and reissue requests. The fix is to tie each fleet card to a buyer profile that carries the corporate PIN, and have the POS pull it automatically when the card is used.

Bulk fuel deliveries

Stations that supply bulk fuel to industrial buyers (a quarry, a construction site, a logistics fleet) deliver on a B2B basis. The invoice issues at supply, carries the buyer PIN, and follows the credit terms agreed.

Bulk deliveries are large enough per transaction that the buyer PIN is non-optional: without it, the cost (which can be substantial) is non-deductible for the buyer. Stations doing meaningful bulk volumes need a cleaner B2B workflow than they need for forecourt.

The convenience shop

Most stations attach a convenience shop or a small retail counter. From an eTIMS point of view, this is just a small shop: standard-rated SKUs in the main, mixed payment, B2C invoicing, the same requirements as any other retail counter.

The shop and the forecourt should run on the same eTIMS integration so the day's reconciliation is one number rather than two. Stations that run separate systems on the forecourt and in the shop carry double the reconciliation work and double the failure surface.

Why this sector has its own dedicated KRA controls

Petrol stations have long been a sector KRA controls tightly because fuel is high-volume, high-value, and historically a target for under-reporting. The forecourt controller integration with KRA predates eTIMS in some respects, but the 2024 regulations brought every fuel sale (and the convenience-shop sales beside it) under the same eTIMS regime as everything else.

The penalty for a non-compliant invoice runs up to KES 1 million or 10% of the tax involved per occurrence, with cumulative exposure for high-volume sites becoming material quickly. From January 2026, KRA validates declared income against eTIMS data, so a forecourt whose pumps measured more litres than were invoiced is flagged automatically.

Setting up eTIMS at a petrol station in five steps

1. Confirm the pump-to-POS link. Each pump's measured dispense should land in the POS automatically. Manual entry per sale is too slow and too error-prone.
2. Set up fleet-card buyer profiles. For every fleet card, capture the corporate buyer PIN once. The PIN defaults onto invoices when that card is used.
3. Define the bulk-delivery workflow. Bulk deliveries to industrial buyers: B2B invoice at supply with buyer PIN and agreed credit terms.
4. Integrate the convenience shop. Same POS for forecourt and shop so one reconciliation covers both.
5. Reconcile measured fuel to transmitted invoices. Litres measured at the pump should equal litres invoiced through eTIMS. Any gap is the first place to look.

How Veira handles this

Veira integrates with forecourt controllers for measured pump-to-POS sales, runs fleet-card buyer profiles for corporate accounts, and shares one eTIMS integration between the forecourt and the convenience shop. Reconciliation between measured fuel and transmitted invoices happens by default rather than as a separate workflow.