First day of this Circle Week is over and it was awful on my end because several TMs, mostly the first batch of holiday hires, don’t know the rules of this membership. I’m making this post to explain some of the big mistakes people make and elaborate on the weird logic tree that makes this program suck lol.

FIRST THINGS FIRST: Phone number VS Barcode

Entering the PHONE NUMBER will activate any general sales, gift card deals, and discounts as well as adding a digital receipt to the guest’s account. THATS ALL THE PHONE NUMBER DOES. if the guest isn’t a member of target circle, it will give them two prompts to send a text for them to sign up on their phone. THAT DOES NOT SIGN THEM UP FOR CIRCLE. the bottom right of the pay screen will have a pop up button to open this menu again for the guest if it’s skipped, but if the circle membership went through the space will be empty instead.

Scanning the BARCODE does everything the phone number does, PLUS activates any special one time / two time deals that need to be turned on in the app, any earnings toggled in the Wallet menu, any Bonuses if those are turned on, and any gift cards + a Circle Card if those are turned on.

Circle Cards and Gift Cards scanned on the Wallet will not go through until you get to the pay screen and press the big PAY AND PRINT RECEIPT on the bottom (order of operations is Gift Cards then Circle Card. The card reader doesn’t work while PAY AND PRINT RECEIPT is on the screen and not pressed. once pressed, it will finish the transaction if there’s enough funds from any cards used. if it’s just Gift Cards and they don’t pay the whole order, then the card reader starts to take cards again to pay for the rest. if the Circle Card fails and prints a fail slip from the printer, you have to create a Split Payment with the full total for the card reader to work again.)

the barcode is able to be scanned at any time during the transaction UNLESS PAYMENTS ARE ALREADY ADDED. some guests don’t realize this and will wait until after all their gift cards or split payments are through to scan it, so don’t throw away any gift cards until the receipt prints.

SECOND: Bonuses, oh my god nobody understands these and i still barely have a grasp on them after two years of working here.

BASICALLY, Bonuses offer spending a certain amount of money, sometimes on a certain category of items like home supplies or groceries, a certain amount of times to get earnings. there’s usually only one or two going on in a given week or month, sometimes none at all. Example bonus is: Spend 60 dollars on groceries two times to get a 15 dollar reward.

The only information cashiers get for bonuses is if an order qualifies for a bonus but the bonus isn’t turned on. It shows a pop up on the computer screen explaining the bonus and asking whether or not the guest wants to activate said bonus. these are so hard to explain that it’s probably easier to just press Activate, there’s no harm in it compared to pressing No for some reason lol. If the guest has the bonus turned on in their Wallet, entering their phone number doesn’t work all the time. Neither does scanning the wallet. it’s extremely inconsistent and doesn’t update in the app to tell the guest if the bonus is working until a few minutes after.

TIPS FOR DEALING WITH BONUSES:

• taxes don’t count, it has to be the correct amount of money in the category of item BEFORE taxes. if it’s 58 dollars in groceries but it requires 60, but the total after taxes shows 61+, that won’t count.

• alcohol and gift cards and a couple other random things DONT COUNT TOWARDS THE BONUSES. it shows in fine print on the bonus what doesn’t count, read through to see if something on the order isn’t going to count for it.

• the rewards NEVER show up as gift cards, only as toggleable reward funds in the same toggle that used to be for the 1% money. (if you don’t know what the 1% is, target used to give 1% of a purchase back in rewards money to guests who entered their target circle for an order. this program was discontinued in April but they only mentioned that in one footnote in one email with the April Circle rebrand.)

• you cannot split the transaction to get two purchases for a multiple purchase bonus to count. there’s a cooldown in place to prevent that from happening, enough to where i’d suggest waiting a full day before buying a purchase for the second or third step of a bonus.

Bonuses are hell, nobody likes them, truly, good luck if you get them in line but hopefully this helps a little if you’re still confused.

THIRD AND FINALLY, the target circle deals themselves. get ready for a nasty exchange if you hear a guest clamoring to check on the gift card deal or whatever they want this time.

Gift card deals, 9 times out of ten, do NOT stack with each other. a 10 dollar gift card deal and a 15 dollar gift card deal will NOT stack to make a 25 dollar gift card in the same order. the only cases i’ve seen this happening are the laundry and diaper deals, which are year round and unexplainably weird to me. if a guest is talking about gift card deals of any kind, immediately ask them what they’ve seen and what they’re looking for. figure out the situation and stay informed and on your feet about the rules and deals.

if they’re talking about signs saying stuff about circle deals that aren’t coming through on the computer, scan the items yourself with the target app on your phone (personal phone target app is faster than using a mydevice but that’s just me). TARGET CIRCLE DEALS ALWAYS DISCLOSE THAT THEY ONLY WORK FOR “””SELECT””” ITEMS. the app shows a list of these select items. if a guest brought four beauty serums for a buy 4 get 1 free SELECT beauty serum deal, but 1 of the serums isn’t on said list, the deal’s not going to go through. if they complain pull the manager card, it’s the managers call if you should correct it. 9 times out of 10 this it the problem tho lol.

If items are placed next to signs that fully show the deal should be working and nothing seems to be clicking with it, ASK A MANAGER. if you’re new to your store, figure out the vibe the managers have with correcting in situations like those. my store is lenient (because our store is so bad at getting the right signs up in the right places lol) so the cashiers there know to just correct if the sign is just not adding up, but if you’re nervous just ask a manager, the manager will usually have you correct it anyway. after enough time on your own you should be fine to just correct for signs like those unless it’s like, obviously a scammer trying to fool you lol.

stay informed about what deals are currently active, there’s a “Check Current Deals” menu in the sidebar on the checkout application that you can scroll through to see what current deals are active. it even shows the circle week daily deals, it’s super helpful.

that’s all for now, i just had a chaotic sunday and just wanted to give some advice in an organized place that will hopefully give some newer TMs some helpful info for the busy season. if any other checkout TMs have anything to add, feel free, ive been working as a cashier here two years and still find out new things every once in a while. any questions are also welcome for new cashiers.