If you supply goods or services to businesses in Kenya, you have probably lived through this more times than you would like to admit.

A buyer asks for a quote. You open an old Excel file, find a price list that may or may not be current, copy the items across, adjust prices from memory, reformat the header, save as a PDF, and send it as an email attachment.

By the time you have done all of that, another supplier has already responded.

Your quote arrives in the buyer’s inbox with no tracking. You do not know if it was opened. You do not know when it expires. You follow up by WhatsApp. You wait. Days pass. You follow up again.

Then the job is won.

And the process starts again from scratch – because there is no connection between the document the buyer just accepted and the invoice your finance team needs to send. Same items. Same prices. Same buyer address. Re-entered entirely, for the second time, into another spreadsheet.

Then the buyer’s finance team asks for an eTIMS-compliant invoice. Your accountant is not available. Two days pass. Your invoice goes out late. Your payment terms start late. Your cash arrives late.

Not because the buyer is slow. Because your process is broken at every single step.

The problem is not Excel. It is the gap.

Most suppliers in Kenya are running two completely disconnected systems side by side.

One system for quoting – usually a spreadsheet, sometimes a Word document, sometimes a template that someone built five years ago and nobody has updated since. And a separate manual process for invoicing, which may involve the KRA portal, an accountant, or both.

Between those two systems, there is a gap. And in that gap lives double data entry, lost time, delayed invoices, and cash that should be in your account but is not.

The KRA eTIMS portal solved part of this. It gave suppliers a way to generate legally compliant invoices without buying expensive hardware. That was a genuine improvement.

But the KRA portal is a tax system, not a business tool. It has no quote module. It has no reusable catalogue. It requires you to log in separately, re-enter the buyer’s KRA PIN, re-enter every item from your quote manually, select the correct KRA classification code for each item, and download a generic KRA-branded PDF that looks nothing like the quote that preceded it.

By the time your eTIMS invoice is ready, your payment terms are already running late.

What we built

Scale has been running procurement for some of Kenya’s largest organisations for several years. We see thousands of supplier quotes every month from the buyer side – Nation Media Group, SunCulture, Galana Energies, and others. We know exactly where the delays happen and why.

What we have built is not a new invoicing app. It is a connected workflow that eliminates the gap between quoting and getting paid – built inside the procurement platform your buyers are already using.

We are calling it Scale Quotes and Invoices. It is live today.

How it works

Set up your catalogue once. Use it forever.

The first thing you do is build your catalogue. Every item you supply, every service you offer, every unit price – entered once and saved permanently. Your catalogue lives on Scale and is available every time you create a quote.

This sounds simple. It is also the thing that changes everything. From this point forward, you never hunt for a price list again. You never reformat a template. You never wonder whether the prices in last month’s quote are still current.

Your catalogue is the foundation. Everything else builds on it.

Add your customers once.

Every buyer you work with gets added to your customer list – their name, their address, their KRA PIN, their contact details. Entered once, available on every future quote. When a familiar buyer comes back with a new job, you select them from the list. Nothing to re-enter.

Build a professional quote in under 10 minutes.

Select your customer. Select your items from your catalogue. Adjust quantities. Add any notes. Send.

The quote that goes out is professional, branded, and clean. It looks like it came from a business that takes its work seriously – because it does.

Know when your quote is opened. Get alerted before it expires.

Every quote you send through Scale is tracked. You see the moment it is opened. You get an alert before it is about to expire.

No more sending into the void. No more following up by WhatsApp to find out whether they even received it. No more losing a job because your quote expired before the buyer got around to reading it.

Duplicate any previous quote.

A similar job comes in from a new buyer, or the same buyer returns with the same scope. One click duplicates your previous quote. Adjust what has changed. Send. Done.

For suppliers who handle repeat business – cleaning contracts, stationery supply, maintenance services, security – this alone saves hours every month.

Convert to an invoice in one click.

The buyer says yes. You open Scale and click convert.

The accepted quote becomes an invoice – same items, same prices, same buyer details, instantly. Nothing re-entered. Nothing rebuilt. The invoice is generated, branded, and delivered to your buyer immediately.

That is the moment payment terms start. Not two days from now when your accountant finishes drafting the invoice. Now.

See exactly what you are owed, what has been paid, and what is overdue.

Every invoice you send through Scale is tracked through to payment. Your dashboard shows your full revenue picture – what has been billed, what has been paid, and what is outstanding.

You will also be able to generate an account statement for any customer showing their full invoice history – useful when chasing payment or reviewing a long-term relationship.

For the first time, you will know your actual cash position at any point. Not a rough estimate based on memory. An accurate, up-to-date view of your business.

The full feature set

Scale Quotes and Invoices includes:

Quoting

• Central product and service catalogue
• Customer management
• Professional branded quote generation
• Quote tracking – opened, viewed, expiry alerts
• Quote duplication
• Quote-to-invoice conversion in one click

Invoicing and billing

• Invoice generation from accepted quotes
• Credit notes
• Recurring invoices for regular contracts
• Account statements per customer
• Payment account management
• Invoice reminders

Reporting

• Revenue dashboard – billed, paid, outstanding
• VAT report
• Reports by customer and period

Coming soon

• Direct KRA eTIMS integration – compliant invoices generated and submitted automatically, without the portal

On the KRA portal

A lot of suppliers now use the KRA portal directly to generate eTIMS invoices. It works. It is free. We are not arguing with that.

But the KRA portal is a compliance tool, not a business tool. The nine steps a supplier goes through to generate an eTIMS invoice via the portal – from logging in to downloading a generic PDF – are nine steps that Scale collapses into one.

More importantly, the KRA portal sits at the end of a broken process. It does not fix the quoting problem, the double-entry problem, or the tracking problem. It adds a mandatory compliance step to an already slow sequence.

Scale does not replace the KRA portal. Scale replaces the broken workflow that the KRA portal sits at the end of.

And when Scale’s own KRA-certified eTIMS integration launches – coming soon – every invoice generated through Scale will automatically be eTIMS-compliant. No portal login. No manual tax code selection. No separate step. Suppliers already using Scale Quotes and Invoices will have nothing extra to do.

Who this is for

Scale Quotes and Invoices is built for any supplier doing B2B work in Kenya.

It is particularly useful if:

• You supply the same goods or services to multiple buyers and rebuild your quote every time
• You have ever lost a job because another supplier responded faster
• You have ever rebuilt an invoice from a quote because there was no connection between the two
• You have ever had a buyer reject your invoice because it was not eTIMS-compliant
• You have ever sent a quote and had no idea whether it was even opened
• You run a small team and cannot afford to have anyone spending 30 to 60 minutes per quote

If any of those sound familiar, this was built for you.

Pricing

Quotes are free forever.

Build and send professional quotes to any business, any time. No subscription needed. No expiry. No cap on the number of quotes you can send.

The full module – invoicing, catalogue, customers, credit notes, recurring invoices, account statements, VAT report, reminders and payment accounts – is KES 3,000 per year.

That works out to KES 250 per month. Less than the cost of one accountant call to fix an invoice problem.

There is a 7-day free trial. No payment required to start. When you are ready to subscribe, you pay via M-Pesa or card.

One condition: Scale Quotes and Invoices is available exclusively for verified suppliers on Scale. Verification confirms your business details with Scale and gives buyers confidence in your profile. It costs KES 1,000 per year.

So the total cost of full access is KES 4,000 per year – KES 1,000 to verify, KES 3,000 for the full module.

What your buyers receive

Before you decide, see what your buyers will receive when you quote and invoice through Scale.

• View a sample Scale quote
• View a sample Scale invoice

The eTIMS angle – why now is the right time to set up

From January 2026, KRA began validating income and expenses in tax returns against eTIMS invoice records. Buyers across Kenya – especially larger organisations and public-sector-adjacent entities – are increasingly requiring eTIMS-signed invoices as a condition of payment.

Scale’s eTIMS integration is launching soon. When it does, suppliers already verified and using Scale Quotes and Invoices will have eTIMS compliance added to their existing workflow automatically. The quote-to-invoice-to-eTIMS sequence will be fully connected and require nothing extra from the supplier.

Suppliers who are not yet set up on Scale when eTIMS launches will need to build their catalogue, learn the workflow, and adopt a new system at the exact moment eTIMS compliance becomes most urgent.

The time to set up is before that moment, not after.

How to get started

If you are already on Scale, your quoting tool is live. Go to your dashboard, navigate to Quotes and Invoices, and start your 7-day free trial.

If you are new to Scale, visit scale.co.ke. Sign up as a Supplier. Verify your business, build your catalogue, and send your first professional quote – all in under 30 minutes.

Any questions, reach me directly.

support{@}scale.co.ke| +254 701 225 522 |

Scale is a Kenya-built e-procurement platform serving buyers and suppliers across Africa. Clients include Nation Media Group, Davis & Shirtliff, Galana Energies, Carepay, Hand in Hand East Africa and more.