[$250] “Pay 3 Reports” notification appears in Home tab with no payable reports

[m-natarajan]

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

Action Performed:

1. Log into New Expensify
2. Navigate to the Home screen
3. Observe the “Pay 3 Reports” notification
4. Click “Begin.”
5. Observe the resulting screen.

Expected Result:

The notification should only appear if there are actual reports requiring payment
Clicking “Begin” should navigate to a clear list of payable reports
If no reports exist, the notification should not be shown

Actual Result:

The user sees a “Pay 3 Reports” notification despite having no reports to pay
Clicking “Begin” leads to an empty screen
The notification continues to reappear.

Workaround:

Unknown

Platforms:

Select the officially supported platforms where the issue was reproduced:

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

Screenshots/Videos

The video for the issue is in Slack thread

View all open jobs on GitHub

Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @Krishna2323

Upwork Automation - Do Not Edit

• Upwork Job URL: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~022034721717276535787
• Upwork Job ID: 2034721717276535787
• Last Price Increase: 2026-05-01

[MelvinBot]

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

[Krishna2323]

I can reproduce the bug using the steps in the OP:

Monosnap.screencast.2026-03-20.01-25-31.mp4

[MelvinBot]

Proposal

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

The "Pay 3 Reports" notification appears in the Home tab's For You section, but when the user clicks "Begin", they land on a screen with no actionable payable reports. The notification keeps reappearing despite there being no reports the user can actually pay.

What is the root cause of that problem?

The notification count and the search results page use two different functions to determine if a report is payable, and the counting function is more permissive than the display function.

For the count (notification badge): isPrimaryPayAction() in ReportPrimaryActionUtils.ts is called from todos.ts:67.

For the display (search results): canIOUBePaid() in IOU/index.ts + a hasHeldExpenses() check is called from SearchUIUtils.ts:1974-1979.

canIOUBePaid applies several additional checks that isPrimaryPayAction does not:

1. Held expenses — getActions() in SearchUIUtils excludes reports where hasHeldExpenses() is true. isPrimaryPayAction never checks for held expenses.
2. Auto-reimbursable reports — canIOUBePaid checks !isAutoReimbursable. isPrimaryPayAction has no such check, so reports eligible for automatic reimbursement are counted as payable.
3. Pay-at-end expense reports — canIOUBePaid checks !isPayAtEndExpenseReport. isPrimaryPayAction does not.
4. isWaitingOnBankAccount handling — isPrimaryPayAction allows closed or submitted-without-approval reports even when isWaitingOnBankAccount = true, while canIOUBePaid blocks all reports with isWaitingOnBankAccount = true.
5. Negative reimbursable spend — isPrimaryPayAction uses reimbursableSpend !== 0 (accepts negatives), while canIOUBePaid uses reimbursableSpend > 0.

Reports that pass isPrimaryPayAction but fail canIOUBePaid get counted in the "Pay X Reports" badge but cannot actually be paid on the search results page.

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

Align isPrimaryPayAction() with the same eligibility criteria that canIOUBePaid() uses. Specifically, add the missing checks to isPrimaryPayAction() in ReportPrimaryActionUtils.ts:

1. Add a held expenses check — accept a transactions parameter and exclude reports where any transaction is on hold
2. Add an !isAutoReimbursable check
3. Add an !isPayAtEndExpenseReport check
4. Align the isWaitingOnBankAccount logic so it blocks all report states consistently
5. Change reimbursableSpend !== 0 to reimbursableSpend > 0 (with appropriate handling for negative amounts matching canIOUBePaid)

This ensures the count shown on the Home tab matches the actual payable reports the user sees when they navigate to the search results.

What alternative solutions did you explore? (Optional)

An alternative would be to make the search results page use isPrimaryPayAction instead of canIOUBePaid for determining the PAY action. However, canIOUBePaid is the more correct function — it properly excludes reports that shouldn't be manually paid (auto-reimbursable, pay-at-end, held). Aligning isPrimaryPayAction to match canIOUBePaid is the safer direction since it reduces the count to match reality rather than loosening the display to match an inflated count.

Another option would be to have todos.ts call canIOUBePaid directly instead of isPrimaryPayAction, but that would create a dependency on the IOU module from the derived values config, which may not be desirable architecturally.

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Next Steps for Contributor+ team: Reply with @MelvinBot implement this to create a draft PR, @MelvinBot <your feedback> to refine this analysis, or explain why you are rejecting Melvin's proposal.

[melvin-bot]

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

[melvin-bot]

Job added to Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~022034721717276535787

[Krishna2323]

@luacmartins could you please assign the issue to me? Was able to repro the issue and it's labelled "Needs Reproduction" #85861 (comment)

Tagging you since you were involved in bug thread.

[luacmartins]

Do you have reproducible steps?