[Due for payment 2025-05-20] [$500][HIGH] Approve button not showing up on reports even though need to approve them

[m-natarajan]

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Version Number:
Reproducible in staging?: Needs Reproduction
Reproducible in production?: Needs Reproduction
If this was caught on HybridApp, is this reproducible on New Expensify Standalone?:
If this was caught during regression testing, add the test name, ID and link from TestRail:
Email or phone of affected tester (no customers):
Logs: https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/4856
Expensify/Expensify Issue URL:
Issue reported by: @danielrvidal
Slack conversation (hyperlinked to channel name): #Quality

Action Performed:

1. Navigate into some employee expense chats which have reports to approve.
2. Observe the report preview

Expected Result:

Approve button displayed in report preview

Actual Result

The Approve button is not displayed on the report preview initially. However, it appears in the report details view when clicked. Additionally, navigating to the expense chat causes the Approve button to show up on the report preview as well.

Workaround:

Unknown

Platforms:

Select the officially supported platforms where the issue was reproduced:

• Android: Standalone
• Android: HybridApp
• Android: mWeb Chrome
• iOS: Standalone
• iOS: HybridApp
• iOS: mWeb Safari
• Windows: Chrome
• MacOS: Chrome / Safari
• MacOS: Desktop

Platforms Tested:

On which of our officially supported platforms was this issue tested:

• Android: Standalone
• Android: HybridApp
• Android: mWeb Chrome
• iOS: Standalone
• iOS: HybridApp
• iOS: mWeb Safari
• Windows: Chrome
• MacOS: Chrome / Safari
• MacOS: Desktop

Screenshots/Videos

Add any screenshot/video evidence

The video for the issue, logs and profile trace are in the OP

View all open jobs on GitHub

Upwork Automation - Do Not Edit

• Upwork Job URL: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~021911598661603688104
• Upwork Job ID: 1911598661603688104
• Last Price Increase: 2025-04-28
• Automatic offers:
• linhvovan29546 | Contributor | 107158240

Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @

Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @RachCHopkins

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @RachCHopkins (Bug), see https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/14418 for more details. Please add this bug to a GH project, as outlined in the SO.

[MelvinBot]

This has been labelled "Needs Reproduction". Follow the steps here: https://stackoverflowteams.com/c/expensify/questions/16989

[RachCHopkins]

Report Previews are behind a Beta.

[RachCHopkins]

Turns out this is not the new "report previews" feature, just the bog standard preview. (no beta required)

Took me a while to repro, and not with my test reports - I had an old one that was in a workspace chat where the Approve button actually vanished while I was looking at it, and it didn't come back until I clicked in and back out of it.

I had another which said Submit, and after I clicked it said Approve, then flicked back to Submit and then back to Approve in quick succession. Sadly it doesn't seem to do these things while I am recording the screen.

[melvin-bot]

Job added to Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~021911598661603688104

[melvin-bot]

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

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @youssef-lr (AutoAssignerNewDotQuality)

[melvin-bot]

Upwork job price has been updated to $500

[mallenexpensify]

Starting at HIGH and added AutoAssignerNewDotQuality. @youssef-lr can you review and provide feedback on what you think might be going on? Bumped to $500 in case a contributor might be able to figure it out.

[jaydamani]

@mallenexpensify The child report related to expense is not loaded when we open the workspace chat and we need the report here to check if the user can approve it. Was there a recent backend change related to this?
Also, FYI the same issue occurs for pay button and since once the report is opened the data will stay, we need to clear data and reset to reproduce it again.

[mallenexpensify]

Thanks @jaydamani , @youssef-lr can you review plz? Thx

[melvin-bot]

@rojiphil Uh oh! This issue is overdue by 2 days. Don't forget to update your issues!

[melvin-bot]

📣 It's been a week! Do we have any satisfactory proposals yet? Do we need to adjust the bounty for this issue? 💸

[melvin-bot]

📣 @linhvovan29546 🎉 An offer has been automatically sent to your Upwork account for the Contributor role 🎉 Thanks for contributing to the Expensify app!

Offer link
Upwork job
Please accept the offer and leave a comment on the Github issue letting us know when we can expect a PR to be ready for review 🧑‍💻
Keep in mind: Code of Conduct | Contributing 📖

[mvtglobally]

Issue not reproducible during KI retests. (Second week)

[IuliiaHerets]

Issue is not reproduced using these repro steps with Gmail accounts

bandicam.2025-05-13.10-47-07-118.mp4

[rojiphil]

@IuliiaHerets Looks like the beta code has gone into production which makes the current steps invalid.

We will have to modify the steps as follows:

1. User B creates an expense and submits it to User A.
2. Copy the expense chat URL (e.g. https://staging.new.expensify.com/r/3108611088394448)
3. Sign out from the App if already signed in.
4. Enter the copied expense chat URL in browser and press enter.
5. Sign in as User A. This will land the user directly on the expense chat page.
6. Verify that the Approve button is visible in the report preview.

Production - Issue Exists

60030-production-issue.mp4

Staging - Issue Fixed via PR

60030-staging-fixed.mp4

[IuliiaHerets]

@rojiphil Issue still not repro on staging

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/e0cdb992-c569-4b1a-a18e-adee670654d1
And issue is still repro on production

bandicam.2025-05-13.16-04-13-221.mp4

[rojiphil]

@IuliiaHerets That's great news. So, we are on the same page.
The PR is already on staging and the fix is working well. Once the changes hit production, it will work well there too.

[melvin-bot]

Reviewing label has been removed, please complete the "BugZero Checklist".

[melvin-bot]

The solution for this issue has been 🚀 deployed to production 🚀 in version 9.1.44-8 and is now subject to a 7-day regression period 📆. Here is the list of pull requests that resolve this issue:

• fix: Approve button not visible on first time expense page load #61355

If no regressions arise, payment will be issued on 2025-05-20. 🎊

For reference, here are some details about the assignees on this issue:

• @rojiphil requires payment through NewDot Manual Requests
• @linhvovan29546 requires payment automatic offer (Contributor)

[melvin-bot]

@rojiphil @RachCHopkins @rojiphil The PR fixing this issue has been merged! The following checklist (instructions) will need to be completed before the issue can be closed. Please copy/paste the BugZero Checklist from here into a new comment on this GH and complete it. If you have the K2 extension, you can simply click: [this button]

[RachCHopkins]

Checklist please @rojiphil !

[rojiphil]

BugZero Checklist:

• [Contributor] Classify the bug:

Bug classification

Source of bug:

• 1a. Result of the original design (eg. a case wasn't considered)
• 1b. Mistake during implementation
• 1c. Backend bug
• 1z. Other:

Where bug was reported:

• 2a. Reported on production
• 2b. Reported on staging (deploy blocker)
• 2c. Reported on a PR
• 2z. Other:

Who reported the bug:

• 3a. Expensify user
• 3b. Expensify employee
• 3c. Contributor
• 3d. QA
• 3z. Other:

• [Contributor] 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:

• [Contributor] If the regression was CRITICAL (e.g. interrupts a core flow) A discussion in #expensify-open-source 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: Not Required. The existing checklist is good enough to capture such issues.

• [Contributor] If it was decided to create a regression test for the bug, please propose the regression test steps using the template below to ensure the same bug will not reach production again.

Regression Test Proposal

Precondition:

Test:

1. User B creates an expense and submits it to User A.
2. Copy the expense chat URL (e.g. https://staging.new.expensify.com/r/3108611088394448)
3. Sign out from the App if already signed in.
4. Enter the copied expense chat URL in browser and press enter.
5. Sign in as User A. This will land the user directly on the expense chat page.
6. Verify that the Approve button is visible in the report preview.

Do we agree 👍 or 👎

[rojiphil]

@RachCHopkins BZ Checklist done. Thanks.

[RachCHopkins]

Payment Summary:

• Contributor: @linhvovan29546 to be paid $500 via Upwork
• Contributor+: @rojiphil to be paid $500 via NewDot manual request

Upwork job here

[RachCHopkins]

Contributor has been paid, the contract has been completed, and the Upwork post has been closed.