Bug: Can't edit all merchants

[DeathCamel58]

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Bug description

Unable to edit all merchants. Only family_merchants are editable.

To Reproduce

1. Go to the simplefin setup page
2. Setup simplefin
3. Finish first sync and add an account with transactions
4. Go to Settings -> Merchants
5. Click the 3 dots next to a merchant
6. Click Edit

This yields a 404 on /family_merchants/[id]/edit in the console due to the family_merchants route only attempting to find a family_merchant.

Expected behavior

Should be able to edit any merchant, no matter the source of it.

This should probably be generic, and have a url along the lines of /merchants/[id]/edit, and have the controller search all of the kinds of merchants (maybe just don't filter for FamilyMerchant in the DB).

[DeathCamel58]

As an additional note, I have only tested the Simplefin path to create merchants in a non-manual way. I see code references to AI created merchants, no clue if those have the same issue.

[dosubot]

Hi @DeathCamel58! I'm Dosu and I’m helping the sure team.

Based on the current implementation, the merchant editing bug affects all non-family merchants, including those created by AI. The edit route and controller logic only support editing FamilyMerchant types, so AI-created merchants (used for automatching and logo fetching) are not exempt and cannot be edited via the UI either. The issue is not specific to Simplefin-created merchants—it applies to any merchant type that isn't a FamilyMerchant source. There is no evidence in the code or documentation that AI-created merchants have a different edit mechanism or route. The move towards a generic provider model is underway, but merchant editing hasn't been unified yet source.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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[jjmata]

I know @sokie grappled with the issue of merchants recently, where did you land on this?

[sokie]

@DeathCamel58 it's.....complicated.
Initially the Merchants page was made to create/edit only user created merchants, the controller itself doesn't handle any other merchant types.
Recently we showed all Merchants there but they can't be properly edited.
I've merged #281 which will make the app not have errors anymore, but for now it will show only user created merchants like it used to do.
It's on my radar to extend this properly to show/edit all merchants again.

[jjmata]

There's probably a reason for all this. I bet if we start editing the AI-enriched merchants things like logo download could break ... what other code paths could be impacted if we allow for editing of non-FamilyMerchant merchant objects, @dosu?

[dosubot]

You're right—editing non-FamilyMerchant merchants (like AI-enriched or provider-synced types) could break several features. Logo download is especially at risk because merchant logos are fetched via AI and Brandfetch integrations, and the system expects certain fields (like name, source, and sometimes provider_merchant_id) to remain stable for automatching and logo retrieval. If these identifiers change, automatched transactions could lose their merchant association, and logo downloads might fail or show fallback icons instead. There are currently no explicit safeguards in the codebase to prevent edits to these merchant types, but the app relies on only allowing edits for user-created merchants to avoid breaking these invariants. If editing is enabled for provider/AI merchants, it would need careful validation and possibly read-only flags for critical fields to prevent desynchronization with providers and loss of automatch integrity.
Sources: logo fetching and AI integration, ProviderMerchant model, controller logic.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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[jjmata]

So, what should we do here gentlemen? Bugs me that I cannot clean up merchant names/normalize them. Thoughts/suggestions?

[sokie]

So, what should we do here gentlemen? Bugs me that I cannot clean up merchant names/normalize them. Thoughts/suggestions?

My 2 cents:

• the merchants page should show ALL merchants, including auto generated ones
• maybe we can visually make it clear which is which
• when creating/editing we should use brandfetch api to auto complete merchants the same way we do stock tickers
• if user manually inputs a merchant that doesn't exist, show a message explaining what that means for the UX