How eTIMS and Pastel connect
Pastel is your accounting system; eTIMS is KRA's invoicing and compliance layer. Integration means a bridge that takes invoices from Pastel, signs and transmits them to eTIMS, and records the control number back.
Most businesses connect the two through a KRA-certified integrator that supports Pastel, or through a POS system that handles eTIMS natively and supplies Pastel with the resulting sales records. Veira takes the second route: it integrates with Pastel directly, supplying your existing accounting setup with clean, reconciled records rather than requiring you to migrate.
What crosses that bridge is not the Pastel invoice document. eTIMS expects a structured submission with the fields KRA defines: seller PIN, buyer PIN where the buyer intends to claim input VAT, an item classification code on every line, quantity, unit price, tax rate and tax amount. Your control unit signs it, KRA returns an invoice number, and a well-built bridge writes that number back so Pastel shows which invoices are cleared and which are not.
The mapping between the two is the real project. Pastel item codes and tax ledgers reflect how your business has described itself for years; eTIMS wants its own classification and defined tax rates. Nothing translates automatically, and a line that does not map produces a rejection rather than a warning.
Which route suits you follows from where invoices are actually raised. If they are produced in an office, after the fact, from delivery notes or orders, bridging Pastel to eTIMS keeps that workflow intact. If they are produced at a counter with a customer waiting, clearing the invoice at the point of sale and feeding Pastel afterwards matches the real sequence of events, and there is no separate bridge to maintain.
Want to see it running in your own business first?
Sign UpHow to set up eTIMS with Pastel
The general path, tailored by whichever integrator you use:
- 1
Confirm your eTIMS registration and control unit
Your business needs to be registered on eTIMS with its control unit (OSCU or VSCU) set up before any integration can sign invoices.
- 2
Choose a KRA-certified integrator that supports Pastel
Confirm the integrator or middleware is certified by KRA and has a working connection to Pastel.
- 3
Map items, tax codes and customers
Align Pastel's items, tax codes and customer records to what eTIMS expects, so invoices carry correct classifications.
- 4
Test before going live
Run test invoices through the eTIMS sandbox to confirm the connection works before it touches real sales.
- 5
Go live and reconcile
Once live, confirm control numbers appear back in Pastel so your books show compliance status per invoice.
- 6
Define the credit-note path
A credit note must reference the eTIMS invoice it reverses, so returns and corrections need an agreed route through the integration rather than a manual adjustment in Pastel. Decide this before go-live; the first return will arrive sooner than you expect.
- 7
Establish what happens offline
Connectivity is not continuous. Confirm whether invoices queue locally and transmit when the connection returns, and how you check that the queue actually cleared rather than trusting that it did.
- 8
Reconcile monthly, not at filing time
Compare the invoices Pastel holds for a period against what eTIMS shows for the same period, once a month. A gap found in month one is a few invoices; the same gap found at filing is a reconstruction exercise.
Mistakes to avoid
Assuming Pastel alone satisfies eTIMS
Pastel records the sale but does not transmit it to KRA on its own. An integration or a compliant POS is required.
Skipping the tax-code mapping
Mismatched tax codes between Pastel and eTIMS cause rejected invoices.
Going live without sandbox testing
Untested integrations fail in front of customers. Test first.
Debugging a rejection in the wrong system
Rejections almost always come from the submitted payload rather than the Pastel ledger: a missing classification code, an unrecognised tax rate, a malformed buyer PIN. Read the rejection reason before you change anything in your accounts.
Leaving returns to improvisation
With no defined credit-note path, someone adjusts the ledger directly and the books quietly stop agreeing with eTIMS. From that point every reconciliation starts from a false baseline.
Taking certification on trust
Both integrator certification and eTIMS requirements change over time. Verify current status with KRA directly rather than relying on any vendor page, this one included.
A worked example
An established retailer had run its accounts on Pastel for years and did not want to change that when eTIMS became a requirement.
It moved point-of-sale to Veira, which handles eTIMS at every sale and supplies Pastel with the resulting records. The accounting team kept working in the Pastel setup they already knew, with compliant sales data arriving automatically.
What changed was not the accounting software but the point at which compliance became certain. Previously a sale was a sale, and whether it had been captured correctly for tax was established later, by a person, from documents. Afterwards the eTIMS invoice number was attached to the sale at the moment it happened, which meant a query about one transaction resolved in seconds instead of becoming an afternoon of matching records.
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 helps
Veira issues a compliant eTIMS invoice for every sale automatically and integrates with Pastel, so your accountant keeps working in the Pastel setup they already run while the till handles compliance.
That removes the need to build or maintain a separate eTIMS-to-Pastel bridge. See how Veira works or book a demo.
Frequently asked questions
Does Pastel connect directly to KRA eTIMS?
Will switching to Veira mean changing my Pastel setup?
Is eTIMS compliance handled automatically with Veira and Pastel?
What is actually transmitted to eTIMS from a Pastel invoice?
How do credit notes work once Pastel is connected?
What happens to invoicing when the connection drops?
Do I need to migrate off Pastel?
Which option costs less?
eTIMS Pastel integration is about bridging two separate systems, either through certified middleware or a POS that already supplies Pastel with compliant records. Veira does the latter, from KES 2,999 a month. See how Veira works, or book a free demo. For more on eTIMS access, see [Veira's KRA eTIMS login guide](/blog/kra-etims-login).
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