>>>AFAIK, VFP doesn't use indexes to optimize GROUP BY so answer still the same, WS.
>>>
>>In other words, if I want to speed up the lenghty process I need to select all records to cursor first, then do group by on a resulting cursor, correct?
>
>No. In other words adding indexes cannot speed up GRPOUP BY.
>In VFP often spliting complex select into 2 sequentual selects makes it run faster but it's not always the case.

Here is the particular select that is running too slow :( I'm thinking of removing group by and running group by as the second step.

TEXT TO lcSQLStr NOSHOW TEXTMERGE PRETEXT 7
    SELECT COUNT(Trans.cTrans_pk) as iAccounts_Count, ;
           IIF(not IsNull(Trans_Employees_Queues.cCommission_Owner_UsGrLink_fk), ;
               Trans_Employees_Queues.cCommission_Owner_Usgrlink_fk, ;
               Trans_Employees_Queues.cUsGrLink_fk) as cUsGrlink_pk, ;
           SUM(Trans.yCurrent_balance_amount)  as yBalance ;
    FROM TRANS
    INNER JOIN Trans_employees_queues   ;
    ON Trans.cTrans_pk = Trans_employees_queues.cTrans_fk ;
    INNER JOIN Employee_queue_schedules ;
    ON Trans_employees_queues.cTrans_employees_queues_pk = ;
     Employee_queue_schedules.cTrans_employees_queues_fk ;
    WHERE <<m.lcFilter>> AND 
          IIF(not IsNull(Trans_Employees_Queues.cCommission_Owner_UsGrLink_fk), .T., ;
              (Trans_employees_queues.iTemporary_Assignment_Flag = 1    AND ;
               Trans_employees_queues.tStart_Date <= <<m.lcDateTime>>   AND ;
               Trans_employees_queues.tExpire_Date >= <<m.lcDateTime>>))
    GROUP BY 2
ENDTEXT
SET DELETED off
llReturn = RunSQL(m.lcSQLStr, m.tcAlias)
SET DELETED on

As I see, I even tried to play with SET DELETED hoping to optimize it...