I really don't see it that way at all -- or at least I think about it
quite differently.
Quicken is definitely a double-entry accounting system if you think of
categories as another name for "accounts that happen to be of the income
or expense class".
Every Quicken transaction has one side in the register entry itself (eg.
$25 in the Mastercard register), and then has the other side in a
category assignment (eg. $25 tools), or, in the case of a split, two or
more category assignments ($15 tools, $10 paint). Just like Gnucash, if
it doesn't balance, a balancing entry is automatically created (against
"Imbalance" in Gnucash, "Uncategorized" in Quicken), but the total of
the transaction has to equal zero in both apps.
It's doing the same thing, just presenting it differently to the user.
Also, Gnucash makes it more obvious that one's books as a whole are out
of balance when one has this glaring non-zero Imbalance account.
Paul
On 2025-11-22 9:41 a.m., Kalpesh Patel wrote:
"... 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.
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