Expense - Merchant page opens when expense already has merchant when submitting expense

[mitarachim]

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Version Number: 9.3.7-0
Reproducible in staging?: Yes
Reproducible in production?: N/A - new feature, doesn't exist in prod
If this was caught during regression testing, add the test name, ID and link from BrowserStack: #76595
Email or phone of affected tester (no customers): jsiodjosjdnisojso@gmail.com
Issue reported by: Applause Internal Team
Bug source: Pull Request QA execution
Device used: Mac 26.1 / Chrome
App Component: Money Requests

Action Performed:

1. Go to staging.new.expensify.com
2. Go to self DM.
3. Create a manual expense with merchant.
4. Click Submit it to someone.
5. Select workspace chat.

Expected Result:

Confirm page will open because expense has merchant.

Actual Result:

Merchant page opens when the expense already has merchant.

Workaround:

Unknown

Platforms:

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

Screenshots/Videos

Bug7055987_1769121855993.4.mp4

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[melvin-bot]

You have been assigned to this deploy blocker because you recently merged this PR: #76595

[melvin-bot]

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

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @brianlee-expensify (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.

[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: #76595 - "Update create transaction Manual flow to ask for merchant after asking for amount" by @nkdengineer (High confidence)
Related Issues: #76050

Recommendation: REVERT

This PR introduced a critical bug in the merchant flow. The code checks whether merchant is required and missing (isMerchantRequired on line 375), but then ignores this check and unconditionally routes to the merchant page for all workspace submissions. This causes users to be sent to the merchant page even when the expense already has a merchant.

Labels: Keeping DeployBlockerCash (blocks App deploy). DeployBlocker should be removed as this is a frontend bug requiring changes to the App repository.

Detailed Analysis

Evidence

The bug is in /src/pages/iou/request/step/IOURequestStepParticipants.tsx lines 387-398:

let route: Route = iouConfirmationPageRoute;

if (isCategorizing) {
    ROUTES.MONEY_REQUEST_STEP_CATEGORY.getRoute(action, iouType, initialTransactionID, selectedReportID.current || reportID, iouConfirmationPageRoute);
} else {
    route = ROUTES.MONEY_REQUEST_STEP_MERCHANT.getRoute(
        action,
        iouType === CONST.IOU.TYPE.CREATE || iouType === CONST.IOU.TYPE.TRACK ? CONST.IOU.TYPE.SUBMIT : iouType,
        initialTransactionID,
        newReportID,
    );
}

Root Cause

Line 375 correctly calculates isMerchantRequired:

const isMerchantRequired = !!firstParticipant?.isPolicyExpenseChat && isMerchantMissing(initialTransaction) && iouRequestType === CONST.IOU.REQUEST_TYPE.MANUAL;

However, lines 391-398 unconditionally set the route to the merchant step page in the else block, completely ignoring the isMerchantRequired variable.

The correct logic should be:

} else if (isMerchantRequired) {
    route = ROUTES.MONEY_REQUEST_STEP_MERCHANT.getRoute(...);
}

Verification

1. The PR modifies src/pages/iou/request/step/IOURequestStepParticipants.tsx
2. The bug reproduces exactly as described: creating a manual expense with merchant in self DM, then submitting to a workspace causes the merchant page to open even though merchant is already provided
3. The bug is staging-only (v9.3.7-0) and PR Update create transaction Manual flow to ask for merchant after asking for amount #76595 was merged on 2026-01-22 and is in the current StagingDeployCash
4. This is clearly a frontend bug - the fix requires changing the navigation logic in the App