"they will do an inventory adjust to cost and select the inventory GL Account as cost and you can do a item transaction report (they may have to do a second adjustment to make sure the GL keeps the correct balance.)"
If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting use the same GL account for both Inventory Control and Adjustment/WriteOff.

As Steve says, control accounts are always easier to reconcile if you never post to them except as control accounts. You would do better to use an expense account for the adjustment account. The other side of the transaction will automatically post to inventory control.

In GridView you can pull the transactions for the item and see all the adjustments as well as receipts and sales.