[MelvinBot]

Explanation of Change

Help site follow-up to Reuse the submitter's outstanding report when the workspace chat has no iouReportID.

That PR changed which report a new workspace expense lands on. The submit path now falls back to the submitter's newest open report when the workspace chat's iouReportID can't be resolved, and the confirmation page's Report field was re-sorted newest-first so it names the report the expense actually joins.

The help site never documented that rule. Create-an-Expense.md said only "Expenses are automatically added to a report," which does not tell a member whether their expense joins an existing report or starts a new one — the exact confusion behind the linked issue, where an extra report appeared after an admin moved an expense and the member deleted the emptied report.

Changes, all in docs/articles/new-expensify/reports-and-expenses/Create-an-Expense.md:

• New ## How Expensify chooses the report your workspace expense is added to section stating the rule: your most recently created Draft report on that workspace is reused; a new report is created only when you have none; a report owned by another member is never reused; and submitting a report moves it out of Draft, so the next expense starts a new one.
• The same section documents the Report field on the expense confirmation page as the place to see and change the destination before selecting Create expense.
• New FAQ entry — "Why was my expense added to a new report instead of my existing report?" — matching the search phrasing a member hits after this surprises them, and naming the causes (submitted, deleted, or admin-moved reports).
• Cross-reference added to the existing "Expenses are automatically added to a report" bullet, plus a link to Understanding-Report-Statuses-and-Actions for what Draft means, and updated keywords / internalScope.
• One <!-- SCREENSHOT: --> placeholder for the confirmation page with the Report field visible.

Authoring compliance

Written against docs/HELPSITE_NAMING_CONVENTIONS.md, docs/HELP_AUTHORING_GUIDELINES.md, and docs/TEMPLATE.md. The new headings are task-based and start with a question word, only ## is used, no new # heading was added, and the screenshot placeholder uses the required HTML-comment format with a specific purpose.

UI label verification

Labels were checked against the live web UI rather than taken from the code, per the request:

• The workspace chat + menu item is exactly Create expense (menu order: Create expense, Track distance, Create report, Assign task, Add attachment).
• The manual-expense confirmation page rows are Add receipt, Amount, Merchant, Description, Category, Date, Reimbursable, Report — the destination row is exactly Report, and its value read New report on a fresh account.
• The final submit button on that page is exactly Create expense.

One check could not be completed: on a brand-new account with no Draft report, the Report row is not interactive, so the report-selection screen could not be opened and its header could not be captured. The article therefore refers only to selecting Report and does not name that screen or any control on it.

cspell could not be run in this environment (the sandbox blocked the invocation). The added text uses only ordinary English words and terms already present in the article.

Fixed Issues

$
PROPOSAL:

Documentation follow-up only — the behavior change itself shipped in #100672, which links the originating issue.

Tests

// TODO: The human co-author must fill out the tests you ran before marking this PR as "ready for review"
// Please describe what tests you performed that validates your changed worked.

• Verify that no errors appear in the JS console

Offline tests

N/A — this PR only changes help site markdown.

QA Steps

// TODO: The human co-author must fill out the QA tests you ran before marking this PR as "ready for review".
// Please describe what QA needs to do to validate your changes and what areas do they need to test for regressions.

• Verify that no errors appear in the JS console

PR Author Checklist

• I linked the correct issue in the ### Fixed Issues section above
• I wrote clear testing steps that cover the changes made in this PR
  • I added steps for local testing in the Tests section
  • I added steps for the expected offline behavior in the Offline steps section
  • I added steps for Staging and/or Production testing in the QA steps section
  • I added steps to cover failure scenarios (i.e. verify an input displays the correct error message if the entered data is not correct)
  • I turned off my network connection and tested it while offline to ensure it matches the expected behavior (i.e. verify the default avatar icon is displayed if app is offline)
  • I tested this PR with a High Traffic account against the staging or production API to ensure there are no regressions (e.g. long loading states that impact usability).
• I included screenshots or videos for tests on all platforms
• I ran the tests on all platforms & verified they passed on:
  • Android: Native
  • Android: mWeb Chrome
  • iOS: Native
  • iOS: mWeb Safari
  • MacOS: Chrome / Safari
• I verified there are no console errors (if there's a console error not related to the PR, report it or open an issue for it to be fixed)
• I followed proper code patterns (see Reviewing the code)
  • I verified that comments were added to code that is not self explanatory
  • I verified that any new or modified comments were clear, correct English, and explained "why" the code was doing something instead of only explaining "what" the code was doing.
  • I verified any copy / text that was added to the app is grammatically correct in English. It adheres to proper capitalization guidelines (note: only the first word of header/labels should be capitalized), and is either coming verbatim from figma or has been approved by marketing (in order to get marketing approval, ask the Bug Zero team member to add the Waiting for copy label to the issue)
• If a new code pattern is added I verified it was agreed to be used by multiple Expensify engineers
• I followed the guidelines as stated in the Review Guidelines
• I tested other components that can be impacted by my changes (i.e. if the PR modifies a shared library or component like Avatar, I verified the components using Avatar are working as expected)
• If a new CSS style is added I verified that:
  • A similar style doesn't already exist
  • The style can't be created with an existing StyleUtils function (i.e. StyleUtils.getBackgroundAndBorderStyle(theme.componentBG))
• If new assets were added or existing ones were modified, I verified that:
  • The assets are optimized and compressed (for SVG files, run npm run compress-svg)
  • The assets load correctly across all supported platforms.
• If the PR modifies code that runs when editing or sending messages, I tested and verified there is no unexpected behavior for all supported markdown - URLs, single line code, code blocks, quotes, headings, bold, strikethrough, and italic.
• If the PR modifies a generic component, I tested and verified that those changes do not break usages of that component in the rest of the App (i.e. if a shared library or component like Avatar is modified, I verified that Avatar is working as expected in all cases)
• If the PR modifies a component related to any of the existing Storybook stories, I tested and verified all stories for that component are still working as expected.
• If the PR modifies a component or page that can be accessed by a direct deeplink, I verified that the code functions as expected when the deeplink is used - from a logged in and logged out account.
• If the PR modifies the UI (e.g. new buttons, new UI components, changing the padding/spacing/sizing, moving components, etc) or modifies the form input styles:
  • I verified that all the inputs inside a form are aligned with each other.
  • I added Design label and/or tagged @Expensify/design so the design team can review the changes.
• I added unit tests for any new feature or bug fix in this PR to help automatically prevent regressions in this user flow.
• If the main branch was merged into this PR after a review, I tested again and verified the outcome was still expected according to the Test steps.

Screenshots/Videos

Android: Native

Android: mWeb Chrome

iOS: Native

iOS: mWeb Safari

MacOS: Chrome / Safari

---

@huult, please review the files changed and confirm they reflect the current behavior. Then post a new comment saying @MelvinBot mark this PR as ready for review.

[OSBotify]

A preview of your ExpensifyHelp changes have been deployed to https://1e03ead3.helpdot.pages.dev ⚡️

Updated articles:

• articles/new-expensify/reports-and-expenses/Create-an-Expense

[stephanieelliott]

No update needed on this, per tightened Melvinbot criteria (see https://github.com/Expensify/Expensify/issues/685679). Feel free to reopen if you disagree!