[GNC] Moving from Quicken

[Glenn Serre]

Good morning Barry,

Regarding entering transactions into gnucash: I import QFX files that
I download monthly.

I migrated from Quickbooks and Quicken more than a decade ago (I last
ordered Quicken in 2008), and manage 7 small businesses with a total
of at least 12 checking accounts and a similar number of credit cards
(the business ones rarely get used, though).  Every month I download
monthly statements and the corresponding monthly QFX transaction
records and other information from the bank websites and save them in
a directory tree. Every month, I import the QFX transactions from the
downloaded files and so don't manually enter transactions.  I run
gnucash on debian linux.

I used to import transactions via the Online Actions (OFX direct
connect), but banks have been dropping support for OFX direct connect.
I find the download then import scheme to be no more annoying than I
found direct connect to be.  For BMO, transaction downloads can be
initiated via an appropriately-formatted URL that I generate via a
short python program that I'd be happy to share.  My main annoyance
with BMO is that the transaction records (in both statement and QFX
file) include very little detail.  I address this with other python
programs, one to parse the zelle transaction emails that I receive and
another to parse json-formatted electronic transfer activity.

I have not even considered going back to Quicken.

-- Glenn S.

On Tue, Jan 9, 2024 at 12:49 AM barry milliken
<barry.milliken at outlook.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks for your answer.
> When I said personal accounting I oversimplified.
> My wife and I both have independent consulting businesses.
> That means we have 3 bank accounts and six credit cards for a total of 9 "accounts" (transaction sources)
> Managing downloads manually would be too cumbersome.
> How does Gnucash allow me display my source accounts separately?
> Thanks
>
>
> Barry Milliken
> ________________________________
> From: R Losey <rlosey at gmail.com>
> Sent: Monday, January 8, 2024 11:17:58 AM
> To: barry milliken <barry.milliken at outlook.com>
> Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> Subject: Re: [GNC] Moving from Quicken
>
> I, too, left Quicken about 8 years ago and changed to GnuCash. I had a slight familiarity with double-entry accounting, and I've seldom had any issues with GnuCash.
>
> I thought about importing Quicken data, but then decided against it... I reasoned that if I really did need to reference something I had in Quicken, I could open those files.  In fact, I think I opened Quicken two or three times in the first couple of years, and haven't touched it since. It's just something to think about.
>
> I had trouble getting the downloads from financial institutions to work, so I do them manually and regularly reconcile. I don't really miss this function, but it is possible.
>
> As you will have heard, GnuCash doesn't have "categories"; it has "accounts". At the risk of offending a great multitude of GnuCash users, from the practical point of view, GnuCash accounts are very much like categories in Quicken. I know that they are not really the same thing, but as a former Quicken user, they are.
>
> In my experience, the one thing I had trouble with in GnuCash were the reports - most of them seem to need some kind of tweaking to get them to do what is wanted. Here's another thing to think about: instead of assigning accounts as "tax deductible", if you have an account whose transactions are deductible (such as charitable giving, you can create a report for just these accounts. You just need the discipline to only enter deductible items in such accounts. I do know that there is a US tax setup feature, but I haven't made  full use of that -- and the report using the accounts I want to know about for tax reasons works well enough for my needs.
>
> RL
>
> On Sat, Jan 6, 2024 at 9:50 PM barry milliken <barry.milliken at outlook.com<mailto:barry.milliken at outlook.com>> wrote:
> I've been frustrated using Quicken for years.  Maybe GNUcash will do what I want.
>
> My list of functions is small:
> I use Quicken for personal accounting, mainly to categorize transactions for tax reporting.
> Can GNUcash do these things:
> - import data from a Quicken QDF file as a starting point.
> - allow downloads of transactions from my bank accounts and credit cards.
> - allow me to assign a category to each transaction.
> - create categories (or import quicken categories) and assign each as tax deductible or not.
> - report and summarize tax deductible transaction at tax time.
>
> That's all I care about.
>
> Thanks
>
>
> Barry Milliken
>
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