Trying to keep the routing settings so that I can save time and not have to always manually route each ext. every time I load a kit.
A template will be the easiest.
There are other less practical ways if for some reason you dont want to use templates or need it in older projects:
The advantage of this is you can have a bunch of different Groups with different IO settings based on your needs, in case you often use more than one configuration.
Have you tried saving your preferred default settings as a template for new projects?