>>BTW, here's the simplest way to get datime value w/o time portion

GROUP BY DATEADD(day, DATEDIFF(day, 0, ft.trans_date), 0)

>
>Thank reduced the time to run the Select from about 10-15 minutes to about
>10-15 seconds.

Interesting. Did you also replace ShipDate calculation in the column list with this exprerssion?