If it hasn't been mentioned then one major difference is that GNUCASH is a double entry system -- what that means is that it is equivalent to having Quicken split (GNUCASH's split is different - keep this distinction in mind as it is important) or transfer for every transactions in which when you add and subtract all sub components (I like to refer to them as legs) in transaction they add up to zero. Given that, all transactions will have at least two legs.
Think of it this way in its simplicity that if you are paying a credit card then you are withdrawing from bank (1st leg) and paying credit card (2nd leg) - either way when you add these two legs, it sums to zero. You sort of did double entry in Quicken but the user interface kind of hid that as it has been mentioned -- in afore example in Quicken you selected the bank account (1st leg implicitly selected) and then you entered a payment to credit card (2nd leg) as either generic entry or you selected a category that started with '[' in Quicken to post against an account. In this case Quicken just presented a single line in the register as a transaction. In GNUCASH's register you will see two lines for it. After while I got into mindset of Quicken categories as nothing more than income or expense account like others mentioned here. Quicken notes them as Spending & Savings sub-account types under Primary Accounts. If you think of it from that perspective then you will catch on using it quickly. Of course re-categorizing transactions (aka moving one leg of transaction from one account to another) or re-parenting an entire account to another top level account in Gnucash is a lot simple compared to Quicken, IMHO -- it is literally few clicks. Another advantage I see is that you can create sub-accounts within accounts to nth level which wasn't necessarily trivial in Quicken. So for example if you want to track what type of expense is related to your car, you can create sub-accounts like gas, tolls, repairs, etc., underneath car expense account. Hope that helps a bit to ease the transition. -----Original Message----- From: David Cousens <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, November 21, 2025 6:46 PM To: Larry Weeks <[email protected]>; [email protected] Subject: Re: [GNC] Coming from Quicken Larry, I don't think there is any specific guide to the transition. In general Quicken's categories will generally translate to expense (and or income accounts in GnuCash. If you review the Basics section in the GnuCash Tutorial and Concepts guide it should give you some ide of how GnuCash itself works. https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v5/C/gnucash-guide/index.html The GnuCash Wiki also has a page on Quicken migration https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Quicken_Migration. Hope this helps. On Fri, 2025-11-21 at 08:31 -0500, Larry Weeks wrote: > Is there a tutorial or document that walks through how Gnucash is > different > from Quicken, accounts versus categories, how to move transactions > from > account to account if they were categorized wrong, etc? > -- David Cousens _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list [email protected] To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
