[Hold for discussion][$250] Cannot make an expense negative

[m-natarajan]

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Version Number: 9.0.70-1
Reproducible in staging?: Y
Reproducible in production?: Y
If this was caught on HybridApp, is this reproducible on New Expensify Standalone?:
If this was caught during regression testing, add the test name, ID and link from TestRail:
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): ts_external_expensify_bugs

Action Performed:

1. SmartScan a receipt
2. Open the expense
3. Open the amount
4. Try to correct it to be negative. No way to add brackets or - sign.

Expected Result:

User able to enter minus, plus or Brackets

Actual Result:

User unable to enter minus, plus or Brackets

Workaround:

Unknown

Platforms:

Which of our officially supported platforms is this issue occurring on?

• Android: Standalone
• Android: HybridApp
• Android: mWeb Chrome
• iOS: Standalone
• iOS: HybridApp
• iOS: mWeb Safari
• MacOS: Chrome / Safari
• MacOS: Desktop

Screenshots/Videos

Add any screenshot/video evidence

Recording.815.mp4

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Upwork Automation - Do Not Edit

• Upwork Job URL: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~021866173019746429432
• Upwork Job ID: 1866173019746429432
• Last Price Increase: 2025-01-11
• Automatic offers:
• ZhenjaHorbach | Reviewer | 105292850

Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @johncschuster (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.

[melvin-bot]

Job added to Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~021866173019746429432

[melvin-bot]

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

[garrettmknight]

Potentially a new feature - asking in thread.

[pasyukevich]

Hi, I'm Eugene from Callstack - expert contributor group. I’d like to work on this issue.

[pasyukevich]

Should I create just a PR here without the proposal?

[melvin-bot]

📣 @ZhenjaHorbach 🎉 An offer has been automatically sent to your Upwork account for the Reviewer role 🎉 Thanks for contributing to the Expensify app!

Offer link
Upwork job

[pasyukevich]

In this case, should we allow the entry of a plus sign, calculate the combinations result, and send the computed result to the API?

[ZhenjaHorbach]

@pasyukevich
If required I can assign a random engineer !

[pasyukevich]

@ZhenjaHorbach

Yes, I think this would be great - we need some discussion here for the expected behavior

[ZhenjaHorbach]

🎀👀🎀

[melvin-bot]

@nkuoch, @johncschuster, @pasyukevich, @ZhenjaHorbach Uh oh! This issue is overdue by 2 days. Don't forget to update your issues!

[pasyukevich]

Updates:

• Working on an update

[pasyukevich]

Can we update the ticket description? It seems more like a feature update for the ‘Create Manual Expense’ and 'Edit Amount' than an issue.

Should I also include the update for other places where we need to render this amount in negative too?

[ZhenjaHorbach]

Can we update the ticket description? It seems more like a feature update for the ‘Create Manual Expense’ and 'Edit Amount' than an issue.

Should I also include the update for other places where we need to render this amount in negative too?

CC: @johncschuster @nkuoch

[pasyukevich]

Can we update the ticket description? It seems more like a feature update for the ‘Create Manual Expense’ and 'Edit Amount' than an issue.

Should I also include the update for other places where we need to render this amount in negative too?

Bump here

[pasyukevich]

After this update should we have any scenarios with MoneyRequestAmountForm when a negative value should not be shown?

[pasyukevich]

Updates:

• UI work done
• BE request and response with negative - handles properly
• Now focused on final checks

[pasyukevich]

@nkuoch

I've noticed that when we send a negative value with UpdateMoneyRequestAmountAndCurrency the API responds with absolute modifiedAmount

requestID: 90ab96bc8a8aee49-SJC

[pasyukevich]

@dannymcclain @shawnborton

What do you think about the ‘minus’ sign appearing between the currency symbol and the amount?

Since this is an input field, we need to modify the input handlers to ensure the minus sign is reflected in the value but not shown in the input field itself. It should still be positioned correctly on the left.

From the user’s perspective on a desktop, they will type the minus sign in one place (via the keyboard), but it will appear in a different position in the field.

I’m attaching two screenshots: one with the keyboard visible and one without, to illustrate the current behavior.

[ZhenjaHorbach]

Not overdue

Waiting for confirmation from @Expensify/design !

[dannymcclain]

cc @Expensify/design for a gut check here, but this is my thinking:

What do you think about the ‘minus’ sign appearing between the currency symbol and the amount?

I think this looks really weird and doesn't really feel like how I typically see negative money amounts.

Since this is an input field, we need to modify the input handlers to ensure the minus sign is reflected in the value but not shown in the input field itself. It should still be positioned correctly on the left.

From the user’s perspective on a desktop, they will type the minus sign in one place (via the keyboard), but it will appear in a different position in the field.

I think the idea here is that we won't actually allows users to type the minus sign, but rather they will need to use the Flip button to change between positive and negative amounts. Does that make it easier to position the minus symbol to the left of the currency symbol? i.e. -$4.00

[dubielzyk-expensify]

I think this looks really weird and doesn't really feel like how I typically see negative money amounts.

Agree. I think the negative symbol should appear at the start always. There might be currencies I've not accounted for, but I believe this'll be more obvious

[shawnborton]

Yup, totally agree with that.

[pasyukevich]

Got it

Thanks for the clarification, I will proceed then

[pasyukevich]

Updates:

• Working on negative symbol logic

[pasyukevich]

Updates:

• Keep working on the update - gluing with API submit flow

[pasyukevich]

@nkuoch

I've noticed that when we send a negative value with UpdateMoneyRequestAmountAndCurrency the API responds with absolute modifiedAmount

requestID: 90ab96bc8a8aee49-SJC

@nkuoch Could you take a look?

[pasyukevich]

Updates:

• Removing redundant code from the previous implementation, recording videos to open the PR

[nkuoch]

@nkuoch Could you take a look?

Asking in slack https://expensify.slack.com/archives/C049HHMV9SM/p1738936366214349?thread_ts=1733220192.826509&cid=C049HHMV9SM

[pasyukevich]

PR is ready for review

I've prepared steps only with the creation of the expense with minus since edit submission does not apply it on the API side

#56092

[ZhenjaHorbach]

PR is ready for review

I've prepared steps only with the creation of the expense with minus since edit submission does not apply it on the API side

#56092

Thanks !
I will check tomorrow !
Since we need to finalize the designs