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Access and visibility

Three possible causes, in order of likelihood:
  1. Your role does not include it. Check with an Owner or Admin. See Team and roles.
  2. Your plan does not include it. NHIMA needs Plus; local councils need Pro. See Plan and billing.
  3. The regulator is not connected. See Set up your business.
Almost always a role change. Ask an Owner or Admin whether your role was changed — Bumara does not notify people when it happens.
You are probably not assigned to any location. In a multi-location business, users see only their assigned locations. Ask an Admin to assign you.
Check the organisation switcher at the top of the sidebar. If your login belongs to more than one organisation, you may be looking at the wrong one.

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Filings and submissions

The blockers panel at the top of the filing names exactly what is missing. It will be one of:
  • A required task not done
  • A task that is blocked — this stops submission even if the task is optional
  • A required document not uploaded
  • A fee not yet paid and verified
See Submitting to a regulator.
Progress and readiness are different things. Readiness requires all required tasks done, no blocked tasks, and all required documents uploaded. Two optional tasks outstanding does not block; one required task does.
Check the Messages panel on that filing. A message showing Waiting on you stops the work entirely, and it is the commonest cause. See Messages and timeline.
Check your entity type in organisation settings, and which tax types you ticked on your ZRA connection. Ticking both turnover tax and income tax, or ticking PAYE with no employees, are the usual causes.
Same two causes in reverse. Also check that the relevant regulator is connected and that your plan includes it.
Check your financial year end in organisation settings. Correcting it fixes future filings but not ones already created — those keep the dates they were made with.
Your authorised representative is missing or expired. This is not checked when you request submission, only when the team goes to lodge. See Authorised representative.

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Payments

Most likely a reference mismatch. The payment must be matched to your specific request.
  1. Check you used the exact reference shown on the payment panel
  2. Upload your proof of payment to the request
  3. Raise a message on the filing if it has been more than a few hours
Bank transfers also simply take longer than mobile money.
Retry, or use a different method. If your bank shows the money as debited but Bumara shows the payment as failed, raise a message so it is tracked — do not simply pay again.

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Invoicing

Only drafts can be edited. Once sent, correct it with a credit note or void it and reissue.
Open the invoice and read the rejection reason. Usually:Bumara retries automatically a limited number of times, then stops. After that it waits for you. See Smart Invoice.
The difference is invoices ZRA does not have. Filter your transmissions to failed and work through them. Check this monthly rather than quarterly.
Check whether your products are set up as tax-inclusive or tax-exclusive, and whether the setting is consistent across the lines. Mixing the two is the usual cause.

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Payroll

In order of likelihood:
  1. An allowance’s effective date has not started yet
  2. Days absent were entered in monthly inputs
  3. A new deduction started this month
  4. A loan instalment began
Usually a temporary allowance whose end date was never set, or overtime hours entered wrongly.
A taxable allowance is probably configured as non-taxable. See Pay elements. Correct the element rather than the return.
Either an allowance is excluded from the gross base when it should be included, or the employee is above the ceiling and the contribution has correctly been capped.
That is correct. NAPSA is 5.5% of gross; NHIMA is 1% of basic salary. An employee with large allowances will show a much wider gap.
The deduction cap was reached — total deductions cannot exceed your configured percentage of gross. The shortfall carries into next month.
Nearly always a missing regulatory number. Every employee needs a TPIN, a NAPSA number and an NHIMA number. Add them to the employee record and re-run the pre-fill.
Check whether they were marked inactive before the run they should have been on. A leaver must be included in the month they were last paid, then made inactive after that run.

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Inventory

Your records show less stock than the operation needs. Either goods were received and never entered, or a previous operation was recorded wrongly.Find the cause in the item’s movement history rather than overriding the block. An override is for the case where you know goods have physically arrived and simply have not been entered yet.
Items with zero stock are hidden by default. Either the stock is genuinely zero, goods were received but not entered, the stock is at a different location, or the item is archived.
Check the item has a barcode recorded, that it is the right barcode, and that the item is not archived. Then check the light and the label condition. See Scanning.
It needs a reference photo on the item. If a photo exists but recognition is poor, retake it — plain background, good light, product filling the frame.
Open the item’s movement history and work backwards until the numbers stop making sense. Every change is recorded with its reason and who made it, so the cause is always findable.
Correct behaviour. Stock is only deducted when a lay-by completes. Set lay-by goods aside physically and label them.

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Notifications

Check, in order: your email address in Settings → Profile; your spam folder; your preferences in Settings → Notifications; and whether your role gives you access to that area — you are not notified about what you cannot see.If in-app notifications are arriving but emails are not, the problem is delivery. Start with spam.
Do not turn them all off. Narrow the channels instead — keep deadlines on email and move routine items to in-app only. Constant low-stock alerts usually mean reorder levels are set too high.

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Plan limits

You have used this month’s allowance. Upgrade, or wait for the monthly reset. If a deadline is involved, upgrade — the deadline does not wait.
You are at your user limit. Upgrade, or remove someone who has left.
You are at your storage limit. Add the extra storage add-on, or remove duplicates. See Document vault.

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When to contact support

Raise a message on the specific filing or request when the question is about that item — a rejection you do not understand, a submission that has stalled, a figure that looks wrong. Use support in Settings for anything else — how a feature works, a billing question, a problem with your account, or something that does not belong to one record.
Including what you already checked makes any support request faster to resolve. “The blockers panel says the payroll summary is missing, but I uploaded it on Tuesday” gets a better answer than “my filing is stuck”.If your question is “how does this work?” rather than “why is this broken?”, try the frequently asked questions.
Last modified on August 4, 2026