Initial Installation and Setup

[David Christopher]

William, I have been using gnucash about 6 weeks now, having migrated from
Quicken.

I would suggest you get used to the gnucas environment before you import
anything.  It will save you time later on when you do import the
transactions.

Since you are doing this from Windows, first go to your Documents folder
and create a new folder in there, I called mine GnuCash.  Inside this new
foler will be where you put your data file for gnucash similar to the
Quicken folder where the QDF data files are kept.

Start gnu cash, I forget what it looks like at first boot, but just X out
all the screens except the main screen, [BlankFile attached shot]

Click File > New File and a wizzare will pop up.

Just push forward on the first three screens.  On the forth screen, "Choose
Accounts to Create" Put an X by Simple Checkbook, Fixed Assets and
Investment Accounts and click Forward.  Click forward on next screen and
finally click the apply button.

A Save As screen pops up.  Type in a Name for the darta file.  Click the
button right after Save in folder:  and navigate to your documents/GnuCash
folder, and ;then click the Save as button on bottom right.

You will now have a screen like the one attached [Accounts attached]
 I do not like the Description collumn, it just clutters things up for me,
so I hit ther down arrow on top right of screen and uncheck Description.
Then open it again, go to bottom and check Placeholder.  You see [Altered
attached]

Now anything that does not have a green X click it and hit the delete
button at top.
When you are done it should look like [Just Placeholders attached]

What you just deleted were what Quicken calls categories.  You will bring
your categories into gnucash via the import process so all that you just
deleted in not going to be there to confuse you with all the cagetories
from Quicken that are now accounts and must be assigned to the Placeholder
accounts in gnucash.

Now it is time for you to consider the accounts you will import from
Quicken.  I have two checking accounts, three Savings accounts and sever
savings Goal accounts in Quicken.  In my case I wanted them to be listed
Checking, Savings and Goal.  But gnucash is going to list them
Alphabetically.  To Solve this I made new place holders  1. Checking   2.
Savings  3. Goals

I will attach one shot of how to do this. [SetupNewPlaceholders]
Click New Account Button at top and fill in your own special spaceholders
the way you want similar to that screen shot.
When you are done it will look like [with newplaceholders attached]

Here is the point of this exercise, when you import from Quicken all your
categories and accounts will be on this scree all jumbled up in
alphabetical order.  You will need to assign each and every one of them to
one of these placeholders so you will have an orderly view of your new
accounting system accounts.

I am on a duel boot system now between Windows 7 and Mint OS's.  I will
save this to drafts and open Windows and Export just one one account to
give you an idea of what happens next.

Now you did all this work so save it.  But Save it under Save As choice in
File menu and name it Empty or something.  You still have the Test file
open and are ready to import into it.  If you scew up during the following
steps you can always open the Empty file, rename it and then open the
renamed empty file for the next try.

Go to File > Import > import QIF.  Click Forward on first screen.  On
second screen navigate to the QIF file. and then click Forward.

On Next screen click Start, when done click Forward.

Just keep clicking forward until you get to the Import Screen, then click
Start Import.

Then Click Apply.  You should see something like [afterimport attached]

Get rid of the Description column and choose the Placeholder in there again.

Now start assigning the things that do not have a placeholder mark by them
to the proper place holder accounts.  The First one on my list is Ann which
is an Expense set of categories I use to account for her spending.  I will
assign that one for an example.

Highlight the account, and Click the Edit button at top.  Then all you need
to do is select the parent account which is the placeholder Expense and
verify that you choose Expense in box on left. See AssignAsExpense.

When you are done it will be all nice and neat like Done Attached

Then when tree is collapsed looks like Neat attached.


Now that is just one Account from Quicken, just my wife's checking account
 When you import all your accounts you will have a mess until everything is
soretd out and assigned to proper placeholdes and you will probably have an
account called Impalance.  I went back into Quicken several times, made
corrections and exported again over and over until I got the impalance to
zero.   That is a good reason to have the File Empty around,  I can not
tell you much about the Imbalance fixing because there were all kinds of
mistakes in Quicken.
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