[GNC] Advice on investment accounts

[Steve Hill]

At the moment, I handle investments (e.g. my pension) as normal bank 
accounts.  At the end of each year I receive a statement and I add a 
transaction into the account such as "Interest (5.05%)" which transfers 
the interest from an Income account (or to an Expense account in the 
event of a loss).  I calculate the interest rate that I have received 
and add it into the transaction description (e.g. "5.05%" in the example 
above).

This means that I can easily see how the account has performed, 
irrespective of how much I have deposited over the year by looking at 
the % interest rate that I have noted in the description.  I can also 
see how much (in my currency, GBP) the account was worth at the end of 
each year.

I want to switch over to using Gnucash's "Mutual Fund" and "Stock" 
account types.  But there doesn't seem to be equivalent functionality:

1. Since the security isn't actually being bought/sold at the end of 
each year, the gains/losses for the year are unrealised so there won't 
be an "Interest" transfer.  I guess I could add a blank transaction to 
note down the % interest that they year's gains/losses equates to, but 
is there a better way?

2. I can't see an easy way to see what the account was worth (in GBP) at 
a specific point in the past.  I can add a "Total (GBP)" column to the 
main accounts page, which would tell me how much it is currently worth, 
but not how much it was worth in the past.  It seems that an extra 
column in the account itself showing its total value at the time of each 
transaction would be a solution, but there doesn't seem to be a way of 
doing this?

I presume this functionality is buried somewhere in reports - seems 
significantly more clunky and hard to use than it just being available 
on the account's own tab?

Many thanks.

-- 
- Steve