>I'm trying to count how many customers we have per 1st letter of point of contact (POC). I'm using:
>
>select left(poc,1) as alpha, count(poc)
> from custfl
> group by alpha
>
>Getting error:
>
>Server: Msg 207, Level 16, State 3, Line 1
>Invalid column name 'alpha'.
>
>Can you tell me what is the correct syntax for SQL?

AFAIK, SQL Server won't allow field alias names in the GROUP BY clause unless they are real fields.

Try:
select left(poc,1) as alpha, count(poc)
from custfl
group by left(poc,1)