Using the register

[David T.]

Chuck,

Welcome to Gnucash.

Let me try to answer your question as best I can (I am not a programmer, either, FYI).

Gnucash and Quicken are both finance programs, except that GnuCash uses a more “accountant-ly” way of handling finances, which is called Double-Entry bookkeeping. You can read about this in the Tutorial and Guide (available at www.gnucash.org as well as quite possibly with your downloaded application). To keep the explanation short and simple, where Quicken uses Categories, Gnucash uses Accounts. If you set up GnuCash to have accounts that match your Quicken categories and import your transactions, Gnucash will be able to generate the information you want, using one of the built in reports (such as Profit & Loss). One point to keep in mind is that Quicken would allow transactions that have no categories, but Gnucash requires every transaction to have at least one other transfer account.

Bear in mind that as you import transactions, you may have to assign individual transactions to specific accounts, but Gnucash can learn your preferences and apply them to later imports.

David

> On Feb 2, 2016, at 1:50 PM, <cholmes27 at windstream.net> <cholmes27 at windstream.net> wrote:
> 
> I am not a programmer. I am a very basic user coming from Quicken and want to know if it is possible to set up categories in the ledger for Gnu Cash. I want to use these to generate income and expense reports like I did in Quicken. In quicken entries, I would have a description of the bank transaction and then a category. Is it possible to do this in GnuCash? I may have set up the accounts incorrectly when I first used the program. Basically, I am exporting from my bank account into a QIF format that I open in GnuCash. What I would like to do is be able to have a column for categories instead of the Transfer column that appears when I open the account.
> 
> If you provide an answer, it needs to be in very un-computer geek language. Have mercy on me!
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Chuck Holmes
> 
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