Fix expense carousel position jump when creating expense without category by MelvinBot · Pull Request #91467 · Expensify/App

MelvinBot · 2026-05-22T21:01:03Z

Explanation of Change

When creating a new expense without a category in a workspace chat, the expense would briefly appear at the first position in the expense carousel and then jump to the last position. This happened because:

Transient RBR violation: buildOptimisticTransaction defaulted category to '' (empty string), which triggered a missing-category RBR violation optimistically. When the backend synced and returned the real transaction data, the violation was removed — causing the expense to lose its RBR-priority sort position and jump.
Unstable sort: When two transactions had the same RBR status, their relative order was undefined, so any RBR state change could shuffle positions.

Fix:

Default category to CONST.SEARCH.CATEGORY_DEFAULT_VALUE ('Uncategorized') in buildOptimisticTransaction so the optimistic transaction doesn't get a spurious missing-category violation.
Add a date-based tiebreaker (oldest first) to the carousel sort so expenses with equal RBR status maintain stable positions.

Fixed Issues

$ #90063

Tests

Go to a workspace chat
Create two expenses with category
Create another expense without category
Verify the expense without category does not change position in the expense carousel

Verify that no errors appear in the JS console

Offline tests

N/A

QA Steps

Go to staging.new.expensify.com
Go to a workspace chat
Create two expenses with category
Create another expense without category
Verify the expense without category does not change position in the expense carousel

Verify that no errors appear in the JS console

PR Author Checklist

Screenshots/Videos

Android: Native

Android: mWeb Chrome

iOS: Native

iOS: mWeb Safari

MacOS: Chrome / Safari

AI Tests

Prettier: Passed (no changes needed)
ESLint (lint-changed): Passed (no lintable files changed vs main)
TypeScript (tsgo): Pre-existing errors only (unrelated to this PR)
Unit tests (TransactionUtils): 290 tests passed
React Compiler: Could not run (pre-existing CI environment issue with origin/ ref)

…gory Two changes to prevent newly created expenses from jumping positions in the expense carousel: 1. Initialize category to 'Uncategorized' in buildOptimisticTransaction instead of empty string, preventing a transient missing-category RBR violation that disappears on backend sync. 2. Add date-based tiebreaker to carousel sort so expenses with equal RBR status maintain stable positions (oldest first). Co-authored-by: Kevin Brian Bader <ikevin127@users.noreply.github.com>

codecov · 2026-05-22T21:11:08Z

Codecov Report

✅ Changes either increased or maintained existing code coverage, great job!

Files with missing lines	Coverage Δ
src/libs/TransactionUtils/index.ts	`88.68% <100.00%> (ø)`
...ReportPreview/MoneyRequestReportPreviewContent.tsx	`64.36% <83.33%> (+0.02%)`	⬆️
... and 7 files with indirect coverage changes

MelvinBot · 2026-05-22T21:20:25Z

All PR Author Checklist checkboxes have been checked and the PR has been marked as ready for review.

melvin-bot · 2026-05-22T21:20:27Z

@ikevin127 Please copy/paste the Reviewer Checklist from here into a new comment on this PR and complete it. If you have the K2 extension, you can simply click: [this button]

ikevin127 · 2026-05-22T21:22:33Z

@MelvinBot Fill out the Tests section with same tests as QA Steps and for the Offline tests just add N/A.

ikevin127 · 2026-05-22T21:22:37Z

Reviewer Checklist

I have verified the author checklist is complete (all boxes are checked off).
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- I verified the steps for local testing are in the Tests section
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Screenshots/Videos

Screen.Recording.2026-05-21.at.19.17.22.mov

ikevin127

🟢 LGTM

Everything checks out and tests pass as expected, context on this PR creation:

suggestion and confirmation on using MelvinBot
solution breakdown w/ MelvinBot (response)
final solution confirmation (tested manually)

OSBotify · 2026-05-25T10:46:24Z

✋ This PR was not deployed to staging yet because QA is ongoing. It will be automatically deployed to staging after the next production release.

github-actions · 2026-05-25T10:56:24Z

🚧 @grgia has triggered a test Expensify/App build. You can view the workflow run here.

github-actions · 2026-05-25T11:01:43Z

🧪🧪 Use the links below to test this adhoc build on Android, iOS, and Web. Happy testing! 🧪🧪
Built from App PR #91467.

Android 🤖	iOS 🍎
https://ad-hoc-expensify-cash.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/rock-artifacts/ad-hoc/rock-android-Adhoc-c3dba01ef17-393ba1f-004606076c3bbbe67360ea5a5e993d4e65461f8c/index.html	https://ad-hoc-expensify-cash.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/rock-artifacts/ad-hoc/rock-ios-device-AdHoc-c3dba01-393ba1f-c87e6d03e0571fef8623b5c203b2bfc3ea99b833/index.html

Web 🕸️
https://91467.pr-testing.expensify.com

👀 View the workflow run that generated this build 👀

OSBotify · 2026-05-25T11:23:35Z

🚀 Deployed to staging by https://github.com/grgia in version: 9.3.81-0 🚀

platform	result
🕸 web 🕸	success ✅
🤖 android 🤖	cancelled 🔪
🍎 iOS 🍎	cancelled 🔪

MelvinBot · 2026-05-25T11:25:53Z

No help site changes are required for this PR.

This PR fixes an internal UI behavior bug (expense carousel position jumping when creating an expense without a category). The changes are:

Defaulting category to 'Uncategorized' in buildOptimisticTransaction to prevent a transient RBR violation
Adding a date-based tiebreaker to the carousel sort for stable ordering

These are purely internal code fixes with no impact on user-facing documentation — no new features, renamed settings, or workflow changes that would need to be reflected in help site articles.

OSBotify · 2026-05-25T22:38:52Z

🚀 Deployed to production by https://github.com/luacmartins in version: 9.3.81-2 🚀

platform	result
🕸 web 🕸	success ✅
🤖 android 🤖	success ✅
🍎 iOS 🍎	success ✅

MelvinBot assigned ikevin127 May 22, 2026

MelvinBot requested a review from a team May 22, 2026 21:01

MelvinBot mentioned this pull request May 22, 2026

[$250] IOU - Expense without category appears in the first place in carousel, then moves to last place #90063

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MelvinBot marked this pull request as ready for review May 22, 2026 21:20

MelvinBot requested a review from a team as a code owner May 22, 2026 21:20

melvin-bot Bot requested review from ikevin127 and removed request for a team May 22, 2026 21:20

melvin-bot Bot requested review from heyjennahay and removed request for a team May 22, 2026 21:20

ikevin127 approved these changes May 22, 2026

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melvin-bot Bot requested a review from grgia May 22, 2026 21:29

grgia approved these changes May 25, 2026

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grgia merged commit c3dba01 into main May 25, 2026
57 of 58 checks passed

grgia deleted the claude-fixExpenseCarouselPositionJump branch May 25, 2026 10:37

OSBotify mentioned this pull request May 25, 2026

Deploy Checklist: New Expensify 2026-05-25 #91591

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applause-bot Bot mentioned this pull request May 25, 2026

[$250] Expense -Scan expense appears in the first position in the carousel position after smartscan #91624

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ikevin127 mentioned this pull request May 27, 2026

[$250] Expense carousel doesn't show RBR-actionable expenses first #85553

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Fix expense carousel position jump when creating expense without category - #91467

Fix expense carousel position jump when creating expense without category#91467
grgia merged 1 commit into
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claude-fixExpenseCarouselPositionJump

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