InfiPlex Knowledge Base

Target EDI Integration: Stores and DVS Explained

Target runs two separate EDI vendor programs, and mixing up their rules is where most new vendors get hurt. Target Stores vendors ship wholesale to Target's distribution centers and stores. Target DVS vendors drop-ship individual Target.com orders to the guest. Both use the same four EDI documents, the 850, 855, 856, and 810, but what goes inside them, how shipments are labeled, and how invoicing works are different. This guide covers both programs and where they diverge.

Jump to What You Need

If You Want To…	Jump To
Know which EDI documents Target requires	The Four Required Documents
Understand how Stores and DVS differ	Target Stores vs Target DVS
See how purchase orders and acknowledgments flow	The 850 and the 855
Avoid the document that causes most chargebacks	The 856 ASN
Get paid without reconciliation holds	Invoicing: Where Stores and DVS Split
Understand onboarding, testing, and connectivity	Getting Set Up for Target EDI
Know how Target scores and fines vendors	Target OTFR
Run both programs without building EDI yourself	Target EDI Through InfiPlex

What EDI Documents Does Target Require?

Target requires vendors to be fully EDI-capable before the first live purchase order, with no onboarding grace period. Documents move over the ANSI X12 standard, connected either directly by AS2 or through a VAN. Four transaction sets carry the core order flow, with a fifth for DVS inventory.

Document	Direction	What it does
850 Purchase Order	Target to you	The order itself: items, quantities, pricing, and the ship-to.
855 PO Acknowledgment	You to Target	Confirms whether you can fill the order as written, expected back within 24 to 48 hours.
856 Advance Ship Notice	You to Target	Tells Target exactly what shipped and how it is packed, before it arrives.
810 Invoice	You to Target	Bills for what actually shipped, matched back to the PO and the ASN. Stores vendors send it; for DVS, Target triggers invoicing from the 856 instead.
846 Inventory Advice	You to Target	DVS only. Keeps your items orderable on Target.com by reporting available stock.

Vendor account management, performance reporting, and dispute handling all run through Partners Online, Target's vendor portal. EDI handles the document flow; POL is where you watch your scorecard.

What Is the Difference Between Target Stores and Target DVS EDI?

Same document numbers, different worlds. Target Stores is a wholesale relationship: Target buys your product and you ship it in bulk to their distribution centers and stores. Target DVS, Direct Vendor Ship, sometimes written DSV, is drop-ship: Target sells your product on Target.com and you ship each order directly to the guest. Here is where the two diverge in practice.

	Target Stores	Target DVS
Who you ship to	Target DCs and stores, bulk freight	The guest, one parcel per order
What the 850 looks like	Multi-line wholesale POs, often arriving as a batch with separate POs per store or DC	One small PO per consumer order, name and address in the ship-to
What the 856 carries	Full shipment hierarchy with carton-level detail and an SSCC-18 serial per carton	The parcel carrier and tracking number for the guest's package
Labels and packing	GS1-128 carton labels matching the ASN, per Target's routing guide	Standard carrier label plus Target-branded packing slip, nothing identifying you as the shipper beyond what Target allows
How invoicing works	One 810 per PO, after shipment	No 810 sent. Target's system triggers the invoice automatically from your 856
Inventory	Managed through Target's replenishment, no 846	846 required so Target.com knows what is orderable
EDI certification	Domestic vendors typically certify on the first live PO	Target sends test 850s before any live order
Cancellations	PO changes flow through buyer-initiated documents	Guests cancel orders, so a cancel flow back to Target is part of daily operations

A vendor can be in both programs at once, and many are. That means two document mappings, two labeling standards, and two invoicing patterns running side by side against the same inventory.

How Do the Target 850 and 855 Work?

The 850 opens every order. For Stores vendors it is a wholesale PO, and a single buying decision often lands as a batch of separate POs, one per store or distribution center, each needing its own acknowledgment, shipment, and invoice. For DVS vendors each 850 is one guest's order.

The 855 is your answer, due back within 24 to 48 hours: accept, accept with changes, or reject. Two things make it more than a formality. Late acknowledgments slow Target's planning and can flag your account for review. And an 855 that does not reflect what you will actually ship poisons everything downstream, because Target reconciles the 856 and 810 against it. A quantity you acknowledged but never shipped becomes a mismatch that holds payment.

Why Does the 856 ASN Cause the Most Target Chargebacks?

The 856 is the document Target's warehouses and systems actually operate from, so it carries the strictest accuracy and timing rules of the set.

For Stores shipments, the ASN describes the physical build of the shipment: shipment, order, pack, and item levels, with an SSCC-18 serial on every carton that must match the GS1-128 label physically on that carton. Shipments to different distribution centers need their own ASNs. Target's receiving operation scans cartons against the ASN data, so a mismatch between the file and the freight surfaces immediately and gets charged back.

The Stores ASN is built as a hierarchy: a shipment level, the orders inside it, the packs or cartons inside those, and the items inside each carton. Every level has to add up. Carton counts that disagree with the item detail, or an SSCC-18 in the file that never arrives on a physical carton, surface as receiving exceptions on Target's dock.

For DVS, the 856 is how Target learns the guest's order shipped and what the tracking number is, and it carries a second job the Stores version does not: it is the document Target's system invoices from. Whatever the DVS 856 says shipped is what you get paid for, so an ASN that under-reports a shipment is money left behind, and one that over-reports becomes a discrepancy on your account. Late or missing DVS ASNs also read as late shipments on your scorecard, which feeds Target's on-time fill rate program.

How Does Target Invoicing Work for Stores and DVS?

This is the point where the two programs stop rhyming, and it is the detail most general Target EDI guides get wrong.

Target Stores vendors send an 810. One invoice per purchase order, generated after shipment, and Target pays against the reconciliation of three documents: the PO says what was ordered, the ASN says what shipped, and the invoice must agree with both. Invoice what shipped, not what was ordered. When a line was shorted on the ASN, the 810 has to reflect the short, or the mismatch parks the whole invoice in a payment hold. A batch of ten store POs means ten invoices, each carrying its own PO number, location suffix, and line detail. The practical rule is to generate every 810 from the order and shipment records rather than by hand, because manual invoices are where PO numbers get mistyped and quantities drift.

Target DVS vendors do not send an 810 at all. Target's system triggers the invoice automatically from your 856. The ship notice you transmit for each guest order is the billing event, which is why DVS ASN accuracy matters twice: once for the guest's tracking and your scorecard, and again because it is the number Target pays you against. There is no separate invoice document to correct later, so the 856 has to be right the first time.

For a vendor running both programs, that means one document pipeline ends in an invoice and the other ends in a ship notice, against the same items and the same warehouse. Keeping the two flows straight is most of what Target EDI operations actually is.

How Do You Get Set Up for Target EDI?

Target vendors connect either directly over AS2 or through a VAN, and every document mapping has to be certified before live trading. The path differs by program. DVS vendors receive test 850s from Target before any live order, so the whole loop, order in, acknowledgment, ship notice, can be proven on test data. Domestic Stores vendors typically certify on their first live purchase order, which means the mapping has to be right before the first real PO arrives, on a program that has no onboarding grace period.

Built traditionally, with an EDI provider, mapping work, and certification testing, Target onboarding commonly runs seven to twelve weeks. A managed connection with the Target mappings already built compresses that to a small fraction, because the only per-vendor work left is credentials, item setup, and the certification pass itself. Either way, plan the EDI timeline against your first PO date, not your contract date, because Target's clock starts when orders do.

Day to day, the vendor relationship runs through Partners Online. POL is where item setup, performance reporting, scorecards, and dispute management live. EDI moves the documents; POL is where you see how Target thinks you are doing.

What Is Target OTFR and Why Does It Change How You Ship?

OTFR is Target's On-Time Fill Rate program, and it is the enforcement layer behind everything above. Target measures whether you shipped on time and whether you filled the order completely, down to the percentage point, and fines misses as a percentage of cost of goods sold. There is no ramp-up allowance for new vendors: the program applies from the first purchase order.

OTFR is why the documents carry the weight they do. A late 855 delays planning. An ASN that arrives after the freight, or never, reads as a late or missed shipment regardless of what physically happened. A fill-rate miss you could have avoided by acknowledging accurate quantities on the 855 becomes a fine calculated against your product cost. Vendors who do well on OTFR treat the scorecard in Partners Online as a weekly operating report rather than a quarterly surprise, because compliance trends are cheap to fix early and expensive to dispute later.

How Does InfiPlex Run Target EDI?

InfiPlex connects both programs as a managed EDI trading partner relationship, so there is no EDI software to license and no mapping to maintain. Target 850s arrive as ordinary orders, whether that is a batch of store POs or a stream of individual DVS orders. The 855 goes back inside the window, and the 856 is built from what actually shipped, with carton detail and SSCC-18 data for Stores shipments and carrier tracking for DVS. For Stores POs, the 810 is generated from the order and the shipment so the documents always reconcile, and for DVS the ship notice is kept invoice-accurate since it is what Target pays against. DVS vendors also get the 846 inventory feed and the order cancel flow handled automatically.

Target orders sit alongside Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot, and every other channel in one system with one inventory picture across all your warehouses. Pricing starts at $49.99 a month and is published in full, support is USA based, and the connection often reduces or eliminates VAN costs. See the InfiPlex Target integration or get a free demo.

Target EDI Questions

Does Target require EDI for all vendors?
Yes. Target requires vendors to be fully EDI-capable before the first live purchase order, with no onboarding grace period. The core documents are the 850, 855, 856, and 810, exchanged over AS2 or through a VAN.

What is the difference between Target DVS and Target Plus?
Target DVS is a first-party drop-ship program run over EDI: Target sells the item and you ship it to the guest. Target Plus is Target's invite-only third-party marketplace, run over API rather than EDI, where you are the seller of record. Different programs, different integrations.

What EDI documents does Target DVS require?
The 850 purchase order in, and the 855 acknowledgment and 856 ship notice with tracking back out, plus the 846 inventory advice to keep items orderable on Target.com. No 810 is sent for DVS orders.

Does Target DVS require an 810 invoice?
No. For DVS orders, Target's system triggers invoicing automatically from your 856 ship notice, so no invoice document is transmitted. Target Stores vendors do send an 810 per purchase order, generated from the PO and what actually shipped.

How quickly does the 855 acknowledgment have to go back to Target?
Within 24 to 48 hours of receiving the 850. Late acknowledgments slow Target's planning and can flag the account, and inaccurate ones break reconciliation on the 856 and 810 that follow.

What is an SSCC-18 and when does Target require it?
A serialized carton identifier carried on the GS1-128 label of each carton in a Stores shipment and repeated in the 856. Target scans cartons against the ASN at receiving, so the label and the file must match exactly. DVS parcel shipments use carrier tracking instead.

Do I need a VAN to trade EDI with Target?
Target supports direct AS2 connections as well as VANs. Running Target through InfiPlex often reduces or eliminates VAN costs, since InfiPlex manages the connection as part of the integration.