[HOLD for payment 2024-07-17][$250] Expense - App crashes when opening an expense report after submitting another expense

[lanitochka17]

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Version Number: 9.0.5-2
Reproducible in staging?: Y
Reproducible in production?: N
If this was caught during regression testing, add the test name, ID and link from TestRail: N/A
Issue reported by: Applause - Internal Team

Action Performed:

1. Sign in to an account
2. Go to FAB > submit expense > Manual expense
3. Enter an amount
4. Select a user you have never submitted an expense to
5. Submit the expense
6. Navigate to the chat with the user you just submitted the expense to
7. Click on the "+" icon
8. Click on submit expense > Manual expense > Enter amount >Next > Submit
9. Go to the combined expense report and open the first expense you submitted

Expected Result:

The expense report opens and the app does not crash

Actual Result:

App crashes after opening the report

Workaround:

Unknown

Platforms:

Which of our officially supported platforms is this issue occurring on?

• Android: Native
• Android: mWeb Chrome
• iOS: Native
• iOS: mWeb Safari
• MacOS: Chrome / Safari
• MacOS: Desktop

Screenshots/Videos

Add any screenshot/video evidence

Bug6535811_1720442411664.2024-07-08_15_15_43.mp4

logs (2).txt

View all open jobs on GitHub

Upwork Automation - Do Not Edit

• Upwork Job URL: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~01ab200eebc7b06724
• Upwork Job ID: 1810395750787214444
• Last Price Increase: 2024-07-08
• Automatic offers:
• brunovjk | Reviewer | 103047644
• nkdengineer | Contributor | 103047648

Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @allroundexperts

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @rlinoz (DeployBlockerCash), see https://stackoverflowteams.com/c/expensify/questions/9980/ for more details.

[github-actions]

👋 Friendly reminder that deploy blockers are time-sensitive ⏱ issues! Check out the open `StagingDeployCash` deploy checklist to see the list of PRs included in this release, then work quickly to do one of the following:

1. Identify the pull request that introduced this issue and revert it.
2. Find someone who can quickly fix the issue.
3. Fix the issue yourself.

[lanitochka17]

@rlinoz FYI I haven't added the External label as I wasn't 100% sure about this issue. Please take a look and add the label if you agree it's a bug and can be handled by external contributors

[Julesssss]

Crash seems to be related to Policy key changing? Are we temporarily setting it to FAKE

[rlinoz]

Taking a look at this, weird one

[rlinoz]

It looks like we are creating the first money request in a different policyID other than _FAKE_, and when we open that report again we set it back to fake, which then crashes. Looking like a backend bug.

[rlinoz]

not happening in prod though, and apparently we didn't deploy anything related to staging in Web-E

[Julesssss]

Hmm, nice. At least it points back to app.

I wonder if any of the PRs seem associated with policies. Does this issue seem related?

[Julesssss]

Oops lol, ignore that 🤦

[rlinoz]

Yeah, tested with the production Web-E branch and still happens in dev, so I am gonna go ahead and remove the DeployBlocker for Web-E, will continue looking after lunch.

[melvin-bot]

Job added to Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~01ab200eebc7b06724

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to Contributor-plus team member for initial proposal review - @brunovjk (External)

[rlinoz]

I am having a hard time finding what started causing the issue, so let's ask for some external help.

Also, I think we probably shouldn't be sending the report with a policyID other than FAKE, so that is weird, but it is also happening in prod.

Edit: Oh, the policyID of the threadReportID is the personal policyID in DB but it is _FAKE_ in the FE, trying to undertand why..

[rlinoz]

Asked for help here: https://expensify.slack.com/archives/C01GTK53T8Q/p1720476223648779

[nkdengineer]

Proposal

Please re-state the problem that we are trying to solve in this issue.

App crashes after opening the report

What is the root cause of that problem?

When we submit an expense, we create an optimistic transaction thread here

App/src/libs/ReportUtils.ts

Line 5213 in dd96852

const transactionThread = buildTransactionThread(iouAction, iouReport, existingTransactionThreadReportID);

When we submit an expense in a new DM, we create an optimistic iou report with policyID as undefined here

App/src/libs/ReportUtils.ts

Line 3868 in dd96852

return {

And then the optimistic transaction thread report has policyID as _FAKE_ by default here

App/src/libs/ReportUtils.ts

Line 5146 in dd96852

moneyRequestReport?.policyID,

App/src/libs/ReportUtils.ts

Line 4579 in dd96852

policyID: string = CONST.POLICY.OWNER_EMAIL_FAKE,

After BE returns data, the policyID is changed to personal policyID so the app crashes

What changes do you think we should make in order to solve the problem?

We can change the default policyID here to -1 or undefined and update other places that use this function to pass policyID as undefined if we're passing it as _FAKE_

App/src/libs/ReportUtils.ts

Line 4579 in dd96852

policyID: string = CONST.POLICY.OWNER_EMAIL_FAKE,

What alternative solutions did you explore? (Optional)

[melvin-bot]

📣 @brunovjk 🎉 An offer has been automatically sent to your Upwork account for the Reviewer role 🎉 Thanks for contributing to the Expensify app!

Offer link
Upwork job

[rlinoz]

I think the automation failed, but this is in prod already.

@isabelastisser

[isabelastisser]

@rlinoz, to clarify, when is the payment due?

[rlinoz]

It got to prod 2 days ago, so the 17, updated the title.

[isabelastisser]

thanks!

[isabelastisser]

The payments were processed in Upwork. All set!

[brunovjk]

@allroundexperts reviewed the PR

@isabelastisser @rlinoz

[mallenexpensify]

Thanks @brunovjk , I just requested a refund, please confirm via a comment here when you've done so.

[brunovjk]

Great @mallenexpensify, I went to make the refund, but the 10% Upwork fee has already been debited, I can refund $225 (Bounty - Upwork fee), okay?
Next week I have other contracts to receive, maybe we'll leave this one alone, and next week we'll cash it. I have no preference, whatever is best for the project.

Note: While we're here, would you know if I can get paid through Expensify instead of Upwork? I don't live in USA. Thank you.

[mallenexpensify]

Thx @brunovjk , that's weird that the fee isn't removed too, hmmm...
How has the 10% fee been debited if it takes them 5 days to pay? Do you have any screenshots you can share.

Currently, all contributors need to be paid via Upwork for 18 months from their first hire, unfortunately you have a while. 2025-08-09 Bruno Rocha

[brunovjk]

Thx @brunovjk , that's weird that the fee isn't removed too, hmmm... How has the 10% fee been debited if it takes them 5 days to pay? Do you have any screenshots you can share.

It shows that the fee was removed, I tried refund anyway, can you confirm if everything went well?

Currently, all contributors need to be paid via Upwork for 18 months from their first hire, unfortunately you have a while. 2025-08-09 Bruno Rocha

Thank you very much @mallenexpensify for the information!!!! I'll leave a note here, it goes quickly :D

[mallenexpensify]

Yup, confirming we got the refund. Thanks @brunovjk , I know it's a bit of a pain. Luckily it happens pretty rarely.

Contributor: @nkdengineer paid $250 via Upwork
Contributor+: @allroundexperts owed $250 via NewDot.

@isabelastisser when you pay contributors can you provide more detail in the description so that we know who's getting paid where, and how much? Thx.

@allroundexperts plz complete the BZ checklist below, seems like we'd want a regression test for this, right?

BugZero Checklist: The PR fixing this issue has been merged! The following checklist (instructions) will need to be completed before the issue can be closed:

• [@] The PR that introduced the bug has been identified. Link to the PR:
• [@] The offending PR has been commented on, pointing out the bug it caused and why, so the author and reviewers can learn from the mistake. Link to comment:
• [@] A discussion in #expensify-bugs has been started about whether any other steps should be taken (e.g. updating the PR review checklist) in order to catch this type of bug sooner. Link to discussion:
• [@] Determine if we should create a regression test for this bug.
• [@] If we decide to create a regression test for the bug, please propose the regression test steps to ensure the same bug will not reach production again.
• [@bz] Link the GH issue for creating/updating the regression test once above steps have been agreed upon:
• [ ]

[melvin-bot]

@rlinoz, @allroundexperts, @isabelastisser, @nkdengineer Uh oh! This issue is overdue by 2 days. Don't forget to update your issues!

[rlinoz]

friendly bump @allroundexperts

[allroundexperts]

Checklist

1. I was not able to pinpoint the exact PR which caused this issue.
2. N/A
3. N/A
4. A regression test would be useful here.

Regression test

1. Sign in to an account and go to FAB > submit expense > Manual expense
2. Enter an amount and select a user you have never submitted an expense to
3. Submit the expense
4. Navigate to the chat with the user you just submitted the expense to
5. Click on the "+" icon
6. Click on submit expense > Manual expense > Enter amount >Next > Submit
7. Go to the combined expense report and open the first expense you submitted

Verify that the expense report opens and the app does not crash

Do we 👍 or 👎 ?

[isabelastisser]

Sorry for the confusion, team! And thanks for handling this, @mallenexpensify!

@rlinoz, can you please review the regression test above? Thanks!

[rlinoz]

I think since this was caught during regression testing we can skip creating a new one.

[isabelastisser]

Sounds good, thanks @rlinoz!

This is all set, closing!

[JmillsExpensify]

$250 approved for @allroundexperts