"... one can make transactions between two Income accounts, or Income vs Expense, neither of which is (directly) possible in Quicken." -- this was possible if you had created an account for everything and then selecting category that started with '[' (which showed up in the Transfers category in the dropdown) during transaction entry in Quicken (it was also the last icon with one that showed a line splitting into two arrows in the transaction entry line). But creating account for everything isn't the norm in Quicken for ease of use ...
-----Original Message----- From: Paul Kroitor <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, November 21, 2025 10:36 PM To: R Losey <[email protected]> Cc: Larry Weeks <[email protected]>; [email protected] Subject: Re: [GNC] Coming from Quicken The way I look at it is this: Gnucash, like the rest of the (formal) accounting universe, has five types of accounts: - assets - liabilities - income -expense - equity Together, these are combined to create the “accounting equation”, and each of these is (almost) always sub-divided into sub-accounts. Quicken maintains these first two of these as accounts (and sub-accounts), but calls the third and fourth “categories” (and sub-categories). The last type (equity) is not formally maintained in Quicken but is calculated on the fly (as “net worth”) using the other four and the accounting equation. My belief is that Quicken was designed this way to be more user-friendly for people with little understanding of accounting. Certainly Gnucash is simpler and more elegant in concept. For one thing, one can make transactions between two Income accounts, or Income vs Expense, neither of which is (directly) possible in Quicken. Paul > On Nov 21, 2025, at 10:11 PM, R Losey <[email protected]> wrote: > > Tutorial/Document: I'm not aware of anything on the official GnuCash > websites, but you may do a general search and find something on > YouTube or something. > > Account vs Categories: I may get a lot of hate follow-ups for this, > but this difference is more in philosophy and naming than in actual practice. > Everything in GnuCash is an account; in Quicken, "accounts" are thing > that hold actual money, such as checking, saving, CDs, or investments. > On the other hand, "categories" are kind of "ideas" to track where the money > goes. > This may not be the best distinction; perhaps someone else could > describe it better. > > Moving Transactions: There are a couple of simple ways to correct bad > data > entry: You can go to the transaction and edit it and change the wrong > account to the right account. You could, if you prefer, just delete > the bad transaction and re-enter it. > > I went from Quicken to GnuCash a few years ago. > > > >> On Fri, Nov 21, 2025 at 2:15 PM Larry Weeks <[email protected]> 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? >> >> -- >> >> 3 John 1:4 I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are >> walking in the truth. >> _______________________________________________ >> 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. >> > > > -- > _________________________________ > Richard Losey > [email protected] > Micah 6:8 > _______________________________________________ > 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. _______________________________________________ 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.
