[$250] Spend - Expense-level export fails with “You can't export empty report”

[applause-bot]

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Version Number: V9.3.84-0
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: #84382
Email or phone of affected tester (no customers): dreamnitethedragon+vegst@gmail.com
Issue reported by: Applause Internal Team
Bug source: Exploratory - Significant User Experience Deterioration
Device used: Redmi note 10s android 13
App Component: Money Requests

Action Performed:

1. Launch app
2. Go to self DM
3. Create a manual expense
4. Open the expense and split the expense by date ( selecting few dates)
5. Go to spend
6. Select all the expense - Export - All data Expense level

Expected Result:

When selecting all data expense level download failed must not be shown.

Actual Result:

When selecting all data expense level- download failed - you can't export empty report is shown.

Workaround:

Unknown

Platforms:

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

Screenshots/Videos

Bug7165096_1779955900649.Screenrecorder-2026-05-28-13-39-38-511.mp4

View all open jobs on GitHub

Applause Internal Information
Exported by: Julia Ponikarchuk
Bug ID: 7165096

Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @ZhenjaHorbach

Upwork Automation - Do Not Edit

• Upwork Job URL: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~022060342029287398175
• Upwork Job ID: 2060342029287398175
• Last Price Increase: 2026-05-29

[applause-bot]

While Applause doesn't embed attachments for this bug, here are the links for quick view:
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[melvin-bot]

You have been assigned to this deploy blocker because you recently merged this PR: #84382

[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.

[MelvinBot]

Proposal

What is the root cause of that problem?

When a self-DM expense is split by date (feature added in #84382), child transactions are assigned reportID: '0' (UNREPORTED_REPORT_ID) at MoneyRequestBuilder.ts:1388 and SplitTransactionUpdate.ts:639-644.

When the user selects these transactions on the Spend page and exports, selectedTransactionReportIDs collects '0' as a report ID (no filter excludes it). The client-side empty-report guard at line 459-473 only checks selectedReports, which is always empty on the expense-level view. So '0' is sent to the backend as a report ID, the backend can't find a real report, and returns the "empty report" error.

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

Filter out UNREPORTED_REPORT_ID ('0') from selectedTransactionReportIDs in useSearchBulkActions.ts:349. Change the filter from:

.filter((reportID) => reportID !== undefined)

to also exclude CONST.REPORT.UNREPORTED_REPORT_ID:

.filter((reportID) => reportID !== undefined && reportID !== CONST.REPORT.UNREPORTED_REPORT_ID)

This prevents the invalid report ID from reaching both beginExportWithTemplate and handleBasicExport, which both use selectedTransactionReportIDs as the reportIDList. The transaction IDs are still sent separately, so the backend can still export the actual transaction data.

What alternative solutions did you explore? (Optional)

An alternative would be to add guards inside beginExportWithTemplate and handleBasicExport individually, but filtering at the source (selectedTransactionReportIDs) is cleaner since it fixes all downstream consumers at once.

Another option would be to assign child split transactions a real self-DM report ID instead of '0', but UNREPORTED_REPORT_ID is an intentional design choice for self-DM splits that other flows depend on, so changing it would have broader implications.

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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.