Accounting software for freelancers and independent contractors in Kenya

Kenyan freelancers often invoice by WhatsApp or a Word document, then lose track once three or four jobs are running at once. Payments land as M-PESA messages, bank transfers and the occasional cheque, and matching them back to a specific job weeks later is guesswork. Without a live list of what is unpaid and how overdue it is, chasing feels awkward and usually happens too late.

Your phone pays for airtime, fuel, lunch and a client's hosting bill from the same balance. At the end of the year you cannot separate the spending that genuinely belongs to your work from everything else, so you either overstate your costs or, more often, forget legitimate expenses entirely and pay more than you should.

There is real anxiety about VAT, eTIMS and the KRA PIN obligations, and a lot of loud, contradictory advice online. Most solo freelancers are well under the KES 5,000,000 taxable turnover VAT registration threshold and do not need to charge VAT at all, but without a running turnover figure you cannot tell how close you are or whether that changed this year.

You know your day rate, but not your effective hourly return after unpaid revisions, transport, software subscriptions and the client who takes ninety days to settle. Repeat clients that feel busy can quietly be your worst-paying ones, and without numbers you keep saying yes to them.

Create an invoice in under a minute with your details, your KRA PIN and clear payment terms, then send it and let the app watch it. Tallium AI shows you a live list of what is outstanding and how many days past due each one is, so following up is a two-minute job on a Monday morning rather than an uncomfortable rediscovery in month three.

Photograph a receipt or forward a supplier email and Tallium AI's AI reads the amount, date and vendor and categorises it for you. That means fuel, data bundles, equipment, co-working fees and subcontractor payments get captured on the day they happen, so your allowable business costs are recorded properly instead of guessed at year-end.

Because every invoice and payment sits in the same ledger, your rolling taxable turnover is always on screen — you can see where you stand against the KES 5,000,000 VAT registration threshold long before it becomes urgent. If and when you do register, the VAT settings, tax-inclusive invoicing and reporting are already in the app and ready for your VAT3 return on iTax. Please confirm current rules, rates and thresholds with KRA or a qualified local tax professional.

Income by client, profit after costs, and month-on-month trends are one tap away on the mobile app, and Tallium AI's AI insights flag things worth noticing — a client whose average payment time is creeping up, or a month where subscriptions quietly outgrew earnings. It turns a shoebox of receipts into decisions about who to keep working with.