[Due for payment 2026-01-27] Expense - Report field in IOU expense shows IOU, Report field in self DM is blank

[jponikarchuk]

If you haven’t already, check out our contributing guidelines for onboarding and email contributors@expensify.com to request to join our Slack channel!

---

Version Number: 9.3.3-0
Reproducible in staging?: Yes
Reproducible in production?: No
If this was caught during regression testing, add the test name, ID and link from BrowserStack: https://test-management.browserstack.com/projects/2219752/test-runs/TR-2989/folder/13177029/41237792/1128449189
Email or phone of affected tester (no customers): sjnodijsodijsoijsio@gmail.com
Issue reported by: Applause Internal Team
Bug source: Exploratory - Significant User Experience Deterioration
Device used: Mac 26.1 / Chrome
App Component: Money Requests

Action Performed:

1. Go to staging.new.expensify.com
2. Open 1:1 DM.
3. Create an expense.
4. Open the expense report.
   BUG 1: Report field shows IOU instead of "User owes x".
5. Go to self DM.
6. Create an expense.
7. Open the expense report.
   BUG 2: Report field is empty.

Expected Result:

BUG 1: Report field will show "User owes x".
BUG 2: Report field shows User (You).

Actual Result:

BUG 1: Report field shows IOU instead of "User owes x".
BUG 2: Report field is empty.

Workaround:

Unknown

Platforms:

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

Screenshots/Videos

1.mp4

View all open jobs on GitHub

Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @johncschuster

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @johncschuster (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.

[melvin-bot]

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

[melvin-bot]

💬 A slack conversation has been started in #expensify-open-source

[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.

[OSBotify]

Investigation Summary

Classification: Frontend bug
Causing PR: #79197 - "[BETA] Allow zero-amount expenses - ROUND 5" by @Gonals (High confidence)
Related Issues: None

Recommendation: REVERT

This PR was merged on 2026-01-15 at 13:30 UTC, just hours before this issue was reported (18:17 UTC). The PR introduces support for zero-amount expenses behind the ZERO_EXPENSES beta flag and modifies expense creation logic, merchant handling, and adds the DEFAULT_MERCHANT constant set to "Expense".

The bug manifests when creating expenses in 1:1 DMs (shows "IOU" instead of "User owes x") and self DMs (empty report field instead of "User (You)"). This suggests that the changes to expense creation flow are causing incorrect report names to be displayed or returned from the backend.

Labels: Keeping DeployBlockerCash (App deploy is blocked). No label changes needed.

Detailed Analysis

Evidence

• PR [BETA] Allow zero-amount expenses - ROUND 5 #79197 was merged on 2026-01-15 at 13:30:11 UTC
• Issue reported on 2026-01-15 at 18:17 UTC (less than 5 hours later)
• Bug is reproducible on staging (v9.3.3-0) but NOT on production
• PR [BETA] Allow zero-amount expenses - ROUND 5 #79197 is included in the staging deploy checklist for v9.3.3-0
• The PR title explicitly mentions it is BETA functionality

Verification

PR #79197 modifies files directly related to expense creation and display:

• src/components/ReportActionItem/MoneyRequestView.tsx - Where the "Report" field is displayed (line 1112-1113)
• src/pages/iou/request/step/*.tsx - Multiple IOU request steps
• src/libs/actions/IOU/index.ts - IOU action logic
• src/components/MoneyRequestConfirmationList.tsx - Expense creation confirmation
• src/CONST/index.ts - Adds ZERO_EXPENSES beta flag

The PR adds handling for DEFAULT_MERCHANT = "Expense" for zero-amount transactions and modifies how empty merchants are detected, which could interfere with report name generation logic.

Root Cause

The PR modifies expense creation logic to support zero-amount expenses. When creating expenses in 1:1 DMs or self DMs, the report name field is showing "IOU" (likely a fallback/default value from the backend) or empty string instead of the properly formatted report name like "User owes $X" or "User (You)".

The changes to merchant handling and zero-amount support likely caused a regression in how IOU report names are generated or retrieved from the backend, particularly for these edge cases.

Additional Context

The PR author included this warning:

"IMPORTANT. READ BEFORE REVERTING
This PR is likely to cause bugs. For this reason, most of its functionality is behind a beta."

Since the bug affects core expense creation functionality (not just beta users) and shows incorrect UI for all users creating expenses in 1:1 DMs and self DMs, it qualifies as a deploy blocker.

[francoisl]

This is behind a beta based on the note at the top of the PR, going to demote. /cc @Gonals to confirm if this is something we need to follow up on though.