[Due for payment 2026-04-01] [Insights] Top categories/merchants insight searches should sort by groupTotal desc

[MelvinBot]

Bug Description

The "Top categories" and "Top merchants" default insight search links use suboptimal sort parameters. They currently sort alphabetically by category/merchant name instead of by total spend descending.

Current behavior

• Top categories search URL contains sortBy:groupCategory sortOrder:asc — sorts alphabetically by category name
• Top merchants search URL contains sortBy:groupMerchant sortOrder:asc — sorts alphabetically by merchant name

While this doesn't affect the default chart views (bar chart for categories, pie chart for merchants), switching to view:table reveals the data isn't sorted by total spend descending — which is the expected behavior for "Top X" reports.

Expected behavior

Both should use sortBy:groupTotal sortOrder:desc so that when viewed as a table, categories and merchants are ordered from highest to lowest total spend.

Root cause

In src/libs/SearchUIUtils.ts, the createTopSearchMenuItem function uses a GROUP_BY_TO_SORT_COLUMN mapping that maps groupBy:category to sortBy:groupCategory and groupBy:merchant to sortBy:groupMerchant, both with sortOrder:asc. For "Top X" insight searches, these should always sort by groupTotal descending.

Recommended fix

Modify createTopSearchMenuItem in src/libs/SearchUIUtils.ts to always use sortBy:groupTotal sortOrder:desc instead of the alphabetical sorting from GROUP_BY_TO_SORT_COLUMN.

Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @mallenexpensify

[MelvinBot]

🤖 Draft PR created: #84424
Please mark it as "Ready for review" when it is ready for review.

[neil-marcellini]

I've been working on fixing a few bugs reported in the first round of review, but hope to get this back up for review in the next day or two.

[neil-marcellini]

It's really close to being ready for a review. I just need a little bit of focus time to finish off the last bits.

[neil-marcellini]

PR merged, will deploy soon