suggestion: investment accounts, balances and reconciling

I have added this suggestion to the support forum at

http://help.infinitekind.com/discussions/suggestions/691-balances-in-investment-accounts-and-reconciling

The text of the suggestion is:

Although MD knows that the critical value for securities is shares, 
not their current value, it gives us very little help in dealing with 
share values. In particular, share balances are not shown in 
registers and there is no way to reconcile share counts except 
manually, even though share counts are the only thing which can be 
reconciled other than the Cash Balance. The Cash Balance is given top 
priority when it should have the lowest priority.

The investment account register shows the Cash Balance, and 
reconciling the cash balance works fine. For most of us, though, the 
cash balance is the least important part of an investment account and 
seldom has a value other than zero. The Securities Detail shows share 
amounts for transactions, but not a share balance, even though the 
box to the right is mostly empty and could easily be reorganized to 
make space for another column. Even worse, ctrl-B (reconcile) while 
Securities Detail is showing opens the reconcile function for the 
cash balance instead.

My suggestions:

1) Remove the Cash Balance column from the account register. This 
will allow other columns to be expanded, which is important because 
the columns in the account register are already cramped. The Cash 
Balance is no more important than the share balances in the 
securities in the account, so it should not have a special place here.

2) Add the Cash Balance to the list of securities in the Securities 
Detail. (It's already in the Portfolio View.)

3) In the Securities Detail register, add a Balance column, which 
would be currency for the Cash Balance and shares for other 
securities. Reorganize the box to the right of the register to make 
it narrower to provide space for the balance column.

4) When a reconcile is requested in the Securities Detail, reconcile 
the currently displayed security. (This is how every investment 
statement I've seen is organized anyway.) When the Cash Balance is 
selected, reconcile in the currency of the account. For any other 
security, reconcile in shares.

5) Disable the reconcile function when in Portfolio View or Register. 
Alternatively, display an extended starting value window which asks 
which security to reconcile.

Edward