Discussion:Request for feedback on Tax Questions vs Practice management or Business Growth discussions

The Practice Management/Business Growth forum (aka PM/BG forum) has been getting a lot more traffic lately, especially now that it also encompasses practice management-type questions. And at the same time the list of business growth resources and group members has grown so much that to get to the forum discussions you had to scroll down a couple of screens.

As a trial, I've rearranged the page so that the resources and group members are available at the bottom of the page, increasing the focus on the discussions themselves. This can be reversed in no time at all if the business growth community members don't like the change. So - Is this a good idea/bad idea? Other feedback on the Business Growth/Practice Management forum?

Also, there are some users who would like to see two separate forums - one for practice management and another for business growth. That's what I'll call (for lack of a better/more efficient phrase) a programming issue; in other words, it's not something that the members could just do for themselves, rather it's something that Intuit would have to handle [UPDATE - we've now gotten some info from Tim Doyle and could establish a separate forum if the user community still sees this as something valuable to do]. As such, it may actually be prioritized lower than some other long-awaited improvements to the website. Therefore, combining the two categories of questions in the Business Growth forum seemed logical, whether that's an interim solution or a permanent one. Agree/disagree/comments?

Comments welcome below. Thanks.

1. Should there be a separate "practice management" forum? Right now, practice management issues are generally grouped with the "business growth community" - and there have been requests in the past two split them out (see here, for example).
2. What topics make up "practice management" as opposed to being part of "tax questions" and as opposed to being part of "business growth"?

Currently, the Discussion Forum Index defines the PM/BG forum as:

"This community and discussion forum is meant for both Business Growth and Practice Management questions. It is for tax and accounting professionals who would like to network together to help in growing their businesses. Questions about software, e-file issues, licensing & exams, CPE, fees, obtaining and keeping clients, collections, RALs, PTINs, EFINs, ERO questions, etc. are appropriate here, along with issues like hiring and training employees and/or subcontractors, purchasing office equipment, handling clients, etc."

Of those topics, I'd think that the first part of the list, "software, e-file issues, licensing & exams, CPE, fees, ...collections, RALs, PTINs, EFINs, ERO question" is generally going to be practice management, and business growth is going to be more for "obtaining and keeping clients, hiring and training employees and/or subcontractors" plus the implicit contents of the business growth community: marketing and advertising your business, managing business growth, etc.

In my opinion, none of those topics are TAX questions, and in the past if questions on those topics have been posted on the tax forum, they've been moved over to the PM/BG forum. Generally, they'd get moved once they drop to the bottom of page 1 of the tax forum or if they're getting no responses at all on the tax forum, or sometimes they're moved earlier if they're very repetitive of prior discussions on PM/BG, but that's a case-by-case thing.

It's been brought to my attention by some of the members that some people DO consider E-file mandate and PIN/licensing questions, and even software decisions, as qualifying as TAX questions. That actually came as a big surprise to me, so I'd like to get some input from more people about that and about the general questions raised above.

Thanks.