Expense report- Violation expense follows the expense without violation

[applause-bot]

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Version Number: 9.4.36-0
Reproducible in staging?: Yes
Reproducible in production?: Yes
If this was caught during regression testing, add the test name, ID and link from BrowserStack: #96022
Email or phone of affected tester (no customers): N/A
Issue reported by: Applause Internal Team
Bug source: Pull Request QA execution
Device used: Pixel 7a/ Android 16
App Component: Chat Report View

Action Performed:

Preconditions:

• Create new account, create a workspace

1. Open Hybrid app / https://staging.new.expensify.com/
2. Go to workspace chat
3. Create an expense with violation (date: today, leave the category empty)
4. Create 2 more expense without violation (date is older than today)
5. Open the report

Expected Result:

Step 4 in PR :Verify that the expense with a violation is and then followed by an expense without a violation

Actual Result:

Expense with a violation follow the expenses without violation in report page.
If create an expense with a violation when enable rules (ex: amount over $25 without receipt), the violation expense is displayed first

Workaround:

Unknown

Platforms:

• Android: App
• Android: mWeb Chrome
• iOS: App
• iOS: mWeb Safari
• iOS: mWeb Chrome
• Windows: Chrome
• MacOS: Chrome Safari

Screenshots/Videos

Bug7210414_1784258089130.96022I.mp4

Bug7210414_1784258089125.96022A.mp4

View all open jobs on GitHub

Applause Internal Information
Exported by: Mita Rachim
Bug ID: 7210414

[applause-bot]

While Applause doesn't embed attachments for this bug, here are the links for quick view:
https://platform.applause.com/services/links/v1/external/ba901dbcb3032f78b94393eff22aea573076cfbe89d121836a2f3dd2a1ba240d

https://platform.applause.com/services/links/v1/external/776453f338494e35258a15253e08c856d89a3560b9d37d99928037fadc15e800

https://platform.applause.com/services/links/v1/external/aaff819b2c99cb59644fe4e1abed96f200d31f604488cfffe04ec564dd834c20

[MelvinBot]

Issue Analysis

This looks like a duplicate of #90063 ("Expense without category appears in the first place in carousel, then moves to last place"), which already has an approved root-cause analysis and an open fix in review (#90464). The two reports describe the same bug at different moments: #90063 captures the transition (violation expense flashes to the top, then drops), and this issue captures the settled end state (violation expense sits below the non-violation ones).

Root Cause: The report/carousel sort pushes transactions with a red-brick-road (RBR) indicator to the top, and RBR is detected via transactionHasRBR → hasViolation(..., showInReview=true). That check only counts a violation when showInReview === true (TransactionUtils/index.ts:2135).

• On creation, the client writes an optimistic missingCategory violation with showInReview: true (ViolationsUtils.ts:553-554), so the empty-category expense briefly sorts first.
• When the server response syncs, its missingCategory violation comes back with showInReview false/omitted, so hasViolation(..., true) now returns false. RBR disappears and the expense falls back to its natural date order — and since it has today's date (newest) while the others are older, it lands last.

This is exactly why the rules-based case behaves differently: a receiptRequired-type violation is returned by the server with showInReview: true, so it keeps its RBR and stays on top. The sort itself is violation-type-agnostic — the divergence is entirely in the synced showInReview flag.

Investigation details

• Report page sort (RBR-first on default Date/ASC sort): MoneyRequestReportTransactionList.tsx:386-405
• Report-preview carousel sort (RBR-first, date tiebreak): useReportPreviewCarousel.tsx:88-104
• Both missingCategory and rules-based violations are stored as type: VIOLATION, so the comparator treats them identically when present — the bug is that the synced missingCategory fails the showInReview === true filter, not that its type differs.
• Confidence: High — independently corroborated by the detailed investigation and proposal already on [$250] IOU - Expense without category appears in the first place in carousel, then moves to last place #90063, which reached the same showInReview conclusion with the same code path.

Scope note: The in-review fix (#90464) only touches the carousel preview (MoneyRequestReportPreviewContent.tsx). This report is about the report page transaction list, which sorts through the same transactionHasRBR/showInReview path. Whoever picks this up should confirm the report-page ordering is covered too, not just the carousel — and decide whether the durable fix belongs on the client (don't require showInReview for missingCategory RBR) or on the server (return missingCategory with showInReview: true, matching receiptRequired).

Related issues (likely duplicate):

• [$250] IOU - Expense without category appears in the first place in carousel, then moves to last place #90063 — Expense without category appears in the first place in carousel, then moves to last place (open, in review; PR fix: stabilize money request report preview sorting by adding a date … #90464). Same root cause.

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Recommended next step: Close this as a duplicate of #90063 and track the fix there, while confirming the report-page path is included in the fix scope.

Reply with @MelvinBot <your feedback> to refine this analysis.

[zeryns]

Hi, this doesn't look like a bug. As stated in the prerequisites in the linked PR, we need expenses with the same category:

• have a report with multiple expenses with and without violation, with the same category

The uncategorized expense with violation appears at the bottom because the code groups the transaction by category

App/src/libs/ReportLayoutUtils.ts

Lines 13 to 26 in e4ae3a2

	/**
	* Sorts groups alphabetically (A→Z) with empty keys at the end
	*/
	function sortGroupedTransactions(groups: GroupedTransactions[], localeCompare: LocaleContextProps['localeCompare']): GroupedTransactions[] {
	return groups.sort((a, b) => {
	if (a.groupKey === '' && b.groupKey !== '') {
	return 1;
	}
	if (a.groupKey !== '' && b.groupKey === '') {
	return -1;
	}
	return localeCompare(a.groupKey, b.groupKey);
	});
	}

App/src/libs/ReportLayoutUtils.ts

Line 89 in e4ae3a2

return sortGroupedTransactions(result, localeCompare);

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[melvin-bot]

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