Target Plus is Target's invitation-only, third-party marketplace, where products from outside sellers appear on Target.com and in the Target app beside Target's own assortment. Target launched it in 2019 and describes it on corporate.target.com as a curated, invite-only marketplace; a June 2024 Target press release put it at more than 2 million products from more than 1,200 partners chosen by Target's in-house team.
On Amazon, Walmart Marketplace, or eBay, a seller with a tax ID and a bank account can register and list. On Target Plus, Target picks the seller. Its July 2026 corporate article quotes Chief Digital and Revenue Officer Sarah Travis on the reason: because the marketplace is invite-only, Target can grow it while keeping the confidence, quality, and trust it says guests expect. Target has opened a route for Shopify merchants in the US to apply through the Marketplace Connect app (June 2024 press release), but application is not admission, and the curation team still decides.
The consequence for a seller who gets in is a channel with fewer competitors per listing and a retailer that treats the assortment as its own. The consequence for the books is the same as any other channel: a separate stream of orders, a separate fee schedule, and a separate payout that has to reconcile to a separate deposit.
This is where public information runs out. Target does not publish its seller fee schedule, payout cadence, or the format of its seller reporting on corporate.target.com or the public Target Plus site, and this glossary quotes none of them. The seller agreement governs, and what a seller can say with confidence before signing is only that the channel is invitation-based and that Target, as the marketplace, sets the terms.
What a seller can plan for regardless of the terms: there will be a commission or fee on each sale, there will be refunds and returns flowing back through the channel (Target's 2024 release notes that guests get Target's free returns on Target Plus purchases), and there will be a periodic statement that nets sales against deductions and becomes a deposit. Those three facts are enough to set the books up.
Another channel means another set of P&L lines and another clearing account. The mistake sellers make with an invitation-only channel is to treat the invitation as a reason to run it loosely, as a side project booked to "Other income." Six months later the CPA asks what the deposits are and nobody can say what the fee rate was.
Set it up the way Amazon is set up: Target Plus Sales, Target Plus Fees, Target Plus Refunds, Target Plus Clearing, and either a channel-tagged COGS entry or a Target Plus COGS account. Book each statement in full, clear the deposit against it, and cost the units at the same FIFO layers the other channels draw from. The accounting workflow for a multichannel seller is one pattern applied per channel, and Target Plus is one more application of it.
Illustrative numbers, with the fee rate chosen for arithmetic, not taken from any Target document. A seller of bath textiles receives one Target Plus statement.
Booked: debit Target Plus Clearing $8,942.00, debit Target Plus Fees $1,632.00, debit Target Plus Refunds $306.00, credit Target Plus Sales $10,880.00. Debits total $10,880.00. Balanced. When the deposit lands: debit Bank $8,942.00, credit Target Plus Clearing $8,942.00.
Cost of goods: 320 units at a FIFO landed cost of $14.10 is $4,512.00. Channel contribution: $10,880.00 minus $1,632.00 minus $306.00 minus $4,512.00 equals $4,430.00, or 40.7 percent of gross.
Now put that beside the Amazon line for the same towels in the same weeks. If Amazon's contribution on the same SKU runs at 26 percent after referral, fulfillment, storage, and ads, the Target Plus line looks better by 15 points. Whether it is better depends on what the Target Plus line does not carry yet: any advertising you buy on the channel, the cost of fulfilling from your own warehouse instead of FBA, and the return rate once the channel matures. A channel P&L line is a starting point for that comparison, and it only exists if the channel has its own accounts.
Target does not publish criteria. Its public statements describe a curation team that adds brands to complement the existing assortment, and a Shopify route through Marketplace Connect for US merchants who want to apply. Beyond that, the honest answer is that Target decides, and an application is a request, not a ticket.
No. A vendor sells wholesale to Target, which owns the inventory and sets the retail price. A Target Plus seller lists on Target.com as a third party, holds its own inventory, and receives a payout net of fees. The two show up in the books as a wholesale receivable and a marketplace settlement respectively.
Whatever the seller portal and agreement provide, which this glossary cannot verify from public sources. Plan for order-level data, a periodic statement of sales and deductions, and deposit records, and build the books to reconcile those three to each other.
ConnectBooks connects Target Plus data to QuickBooks or Xero, alongside the other channels and tools on the integrations page. It does not decide the fee classification or the tax position; those stay with you and your CPA.
Through the same inventory records, yes, with stock tracked by warehouse and each channel's sales drawing from the same FIFO layers. Through the same physical units, only with a channel allocation or reserve, so two marketplaces cannot sell the same last case.
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