[$250] Distance expenses created by Expensify show violations: "Amount greater than scanned receipt" and " date differs from scanned receipt."

[m-natarajan]

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Version Number: 9.3.27-8
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: @abbagail
Slack conversation (hyperlinked to channel name): #Expensify Bugs

Action Performed:

1. Go to Reports > Expenses
2. See the violation and open it.

Expected Result:

Only flag if the user has updated or edited the total or the date of the expense

Actual Result:

Violation for date and amount in both ND and Classic

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 screenshot and video for the issue are in Slack thread

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Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @bernhardoj

Upwork Automation - Do Not Edit

• Upwork Job URL: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~022028960511680301314
• Upwork Job ID: 2028960511680301314
• Last Price Increase: 2026-04-14

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @stephanieelliott (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

[MelvinBot]

Proposal

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

Distance expenses created by Expensify incorrectly show two receipt-comparison violations: "Amount greater than scanned receipt" (modifiedAmount) and "Date differs from scanned receipt" (modifiedDate). These violations reference a "scanned receipt" but distance expenses don't have scanned receipts — they have calculated route distances. This occurs in both New Dot and Classic.

What is the root cause of that problem?

The modifiedAmount and modifiedDate violations are generated by the backend and sent to the client. The App frontend never creates these violations — ViolationsUtils.getViolationsOnyxData() (src/libs/Violations/ViolationsUtils.ts:311-654) passes them through unchanged from the server.

The backend appears to generate these violations for distance expenses with the wrong type (or no type). The modifiedAmount violation has a data.type field that can be 'distance', 'card', or 'smartscan' (src/CONST/index.ts:6092-6096). When type='distance', the message correctly says "Amount differs from calculated distance". But the user is seeing "Amount greater than scanned receipt", meaning the type is either missing or defaulting to 'smartscan'.

For modifiedDate, there is no distance-aware variant at all — the translation always says "Date differs from scanned receipt" (src/languages/en.ts:7782), which is meaningless for distance expenses.

On the frontend, there is no filtering to exclude these receipt-comparison violations for distance expenses:

• shouldShowViolation() in src/libs/TransactionUtils/index.ts:1629-1667 has no special handling for modifiedAmount or modifiedDate
• MoneyRequestReceiptView.tsx groups both as receiptFieldViolationNames (line 92) and displays them for all transaction types without checking isDistanceRequest
• ViolationsUtils.getViolationsOnyxData() computes isDistanceRequest at line 426 but only uses it for tax tracking, not to filter receipt-comparison violations

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

In ViolationsUtils.getViolationsOnyxData() (src/libs/Violations/ViolationsUtils.ts), after the existing newTransactionViolations is initialized from server violations (line 334), add filtering logic for distance expenses:

1. Filter out modifiedDate violations entirely when the transaction is a distance request — "Date differs from scanned receipt" is never valid for distance expenses
2. Filter out modifiedAmount violations when the transaction is a distance request AND violation.data?.type is NOT 'distance' — this removes the invalid "Amount greater than scanned receipt" message while preserving the valid "Amount differs from calculated distance" variant

The isDistanceRequest check is already computed at line 426. The filtering should be added alongside the existing violation filtering logic (e.g., the AUTO_REPORTED_REJECTED_EXPENSE filter at lines 337-342).

Note: This fixes the New Dot side. The Classic side likely needs a corresponding backend fix to prevent generating these violations for distance expenses in the first place.

What alternative solutions did you explore? (Optional)

1. Filter in shouldShowViolation() — This function only receives violationName, not the full violation object, so it can't distinguish modifiedAmount with type='distance' from type='smartscan'. Would need a signature change.
2. Filter in MoneyRequestReceiptView — Would only fix one display location; violations would still appear in other views (e.g., TransactionPreviewUtils).
3. Backend-only fix — Would fix both ND and Classic but requires changes in a different repo. A frontend guard is still valuable as defense-in-depth.

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Next Steps for Contributor+ team: Reply with @MelvinBot implement this to create a draft PR, or @MelvinBot <your feedback> to refine this analysis.

[melvin-bot]

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

[melvin-bot]

Job added to Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~022028960511680301314