SAP Crystal

Score7.4 out of 10

563 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for SAP Crystal are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Data Accessibility: Users have found the data in their company network to be easily accessible, contributing to a seamless user experience.

Customization Options: Reviewers appreciate the software's easy personalization of data and report parameters, enhancing flexibility in reporting.

Connection Flexibility: Customers have highlighted the software's ability to connect seamlessly with various data sources, improving integration capabilities.

Interactive Report Generation: Users find the automated interactive report generation feature helpful for efficient reporting processes.

Export Formats Variety: Some reviewers like the multiple export formats available, providing options for diverse data sharing needs.

Template Standardization Praise: Users praised the template standardization feature for maintaining consistency in reports across different datasets.

SSO Integration Convenience: Some users noted quick logins and authorization syncing with SSO as a convenient feature that enhances security and access control.

Aggregations Capability Appreciation: Customers mentioned the software's capability for aggregations and output in various formats, aiding in comprehensive data analysis.

Reviews

159 Reviews

SAP Crystal Reports - A Little Outdated Giant of Reporting

Rating: 5 out of 10

Incentivized

August 13, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use SAP Crystal Reports to create management reports in web apps. For developer like me it is a convenient reporting tool as it integrates well with Microsoft Visual Studio. For my clients it offers various output formats like PDF, Excel spreadsheet etc.

Pros

SAP Crystal integrates well with Microsoft Visual Studio so development is easier.
It accepts data in different open formats like XML so it can be used with wide range of data sources like databases or web services or web APIs outputting data in XML format.
A wide variety of reporting formats like List, Cross-Table, Master-Child etc. can be designed. Fields can be formatted in a variety of data formats like Date, Currency etc. Grouping, Summary, Calculated fields can also be added.

Cons

Installing process needs to be more user-friendly. It takes a lot of time. Finding the correct version extension for Visual Studio is harder than you think.
Since it's an old and evolved product, it's stable and complete; however, this has caused it to become bulky and slow in the runtime.
"Help" material is not organized properly. You have to search the community pages if you are using some advanced feature like conditional formatting.

Likelihood to Recommend

When you compare SAP Crystal with other new-age reporting tools you tend to gravitate towards the latter. The server installation is bulky; runtime performance of the engine is slower.
Good thing is that you can use it with Microsoft Visual Studio IDE (for development) for free. However, here too, locating the right extension file is difficult. If there's a bug in the Service Pack that you have installed, then you are not sure as to when the next SP will become available. This single thing repels me as I suffered from a bug for several months since that was the only SP available with the version of Visual Studio that I was using.

Nitin Phansalkar

Owner in Information Technology at SME Focus Solutions (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

15 years of experience

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SAP Crystal for report generation

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

May 19, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I work in a cloud based organization. I work with health care clients. I used SAP Crystal for reports generation. I used SAP Crystal for creating and distributing reports for my clients business related data giving insights about their health related data whether related to revenue,doctors,patients,medicines and so on. Also within my organization it facilitated reports creation giving infor. About our regular tasks such as billing reports,shifts etc.

Pros

Regular report refresh scheduling
Various data connectors
Advanced calculative reports

Cons

Better product marketing
Swift UI enhancements
Source control management

Likelihood to Recommend

As a user for positives, SAP Crystal provides decent connectivity to various data sources, which includes various databases, It has strong and reliable scheduling machanism for regular report refreshing resulting in updated data. It also provides reports that are even pri t ready unlike other tools in market that support visibility over web.

Hitesh Gautam

Cloud engineer in Information Technology at Insight (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

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SAP Crystal Report Viewer and Server APIs one stop solution for developing Reporting software extensions

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

April 13, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SAP Crystal reports are used for securing Real-time data based on templates, This works very handy for managing facilities. And provide an efficient way to make decisions and have an edge to make decisions quickly. This provide a low to no code way to implement reporting functionalities. More over with some extra efforts we can also integrate it with an IIS server using .NET or Scripting langaugaes.

Pros

Attachment and integration to Database with similar structure
Utilize Views effectively in relational DB
Easy implementation with C# applications

Cons

More Precise highlighting to errors in formulas
Better hints for alignment
UI of Reports can be more Suggestive

Likelihood to Recommend

If your task is related to creation of Data reports regularly and provide it to management or Stake holders on a regular basis SAP Crystal Reports is a way to go it is very user friendly and does not require a high amount of coding knowledge. If you need to work with different types of template designs generating a few before hand will be your way to go.

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

CRYSTAL CLEAR REPORTING WITH SAP CRYSTAL

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

January 16, 2024

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Proulx Mfg has utilized SAP Crystal for our reports for several years; We can appreciate SAP personalization to customize the data our company requires from our platforms which helps target root cause issues by easily using selected parameters that SAP reporting tools provide by showing our financial tools, inventory data, and company performance even at a standard or customization level SAP Crystal Reports is a great insight to our company demands for managing data with ease.

Pros

Accessible data within our company network
Easy to personalize data and report parameters
Works seamless with our database servers

Cons

Sorting edit grid data
designing seems limited at times
imaging doesn't always load up to size

Likelihood to Recommend

SAP Crystal Reports has work well in cases where our servers are down and even though our database is offline SAP continues to work as if our network is still online cause no disruption to our service or downtime, SAP is extremely dependable for our reporting needs and meaningful data sources

Jenny Miranda

Executive Services Administrator in Manufacturing at Proulx Manufacturing Inc. (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

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Our Business Process Visualization

Rating: 8 out of 10

December 5, 2023

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As our company bought another company, their applications was presented with Crystal Report, having dealt with the application few years ago, this brought some memories, we are using to process and present data that is being processes by our lending applications, it is taking data from several database such MySql and SQL Server, External parties, etc. Crystal report are involved in several of our business processes 1. Data initiation 2. Data Checking 3. Credit Checking 4. Loan Scoring 5. Collection 6. Non Performing Loan analysis Every process is resulting a daily report that we consolidate, while on a monthly basis this is the report format we are sending to the government
Our business dashboard is also built on top of Crystal report

Pros

Consolidate data from several data sources
Low to no code report generation
Configurable

Cons

This is bound for Windows OS, hard to find similar alternative on other OSs
Be careful in Indexing your data, as it will consume resources

Likelihood to Recommend

All of our applications server in the new company that we bought are windows based, despite that there are other alternative to build the report and dashboard, it is something that has worked wonder for us, apart from it is only available in Windows and indexing data that might eat the resource, I still see the application as one of the major player for reporting

Verified User

General Manager in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

It's a great reporting tool for your business!

Rating: 10 out of 10

August 18, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SAP Crystal is used across the company. It allows you streamline inventory refreshes and the custom ordering process into a single automated report. This helps a lot in preventing outages of certain tools or stock.

Pros

It can connect to various data sources
Quick logins and authorization syncing with SSO

Cons

It may be a bit hard to setup for a new user.
While it may be hard to setup it has a lot of great functionality that will come in handy once you are comfortable with it.

Likelihood to Recommend

SAP Crystal is used to generate documents in our ERP system for things such as sales, purchasing, and more.

Emeka Opara

Ambassador for The Technology Innovation Scholars Program in Information Technology at Boston University College of Engineering (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

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A essential tool for accurate report export from SAP

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

July 13, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SAP Crystal is an extremely important and critical tool in our business operations primarily serving sales, finance and dispatch departments where bulk of our invoicing, sales order, Purchase order and delivery challans are generated to cater to our clients as well as for internal auditing documents. All templates for each of the documents mentioned above are designed in SAP Crystal and formatted to match our compliance and governance policies. Especially since we are relying heavy on automation these documents are modified for intricate details capture by our automation bots.
There is a good power of customization for end user with the help of SAP Crystal to generate pdf, excel as well JSON format documents easily

Pros

Template Standardization
Multiple Export Formats
Automated Interactive report Generation

Cons

Report generation lead time should be improved
Export options are limited to excel and pdf only
Frequent updated should be provided

Likelihood to Recommend

Generation of templated reports is the strong suit of SAP Crystal. Allows users to change formats in templates bases on requirement with minimal effort.
Automated report delivery requires the user to be aware of sql which cannot be expected from all users.
Should support more document export formats and improve the UI for SAP B1 Users

Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

SAP Crystal Report Review

Rating: 9 out of 10

May 1, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

This tool is amazing for reporting. You can generate reports from different types of data sources easily. We are using this tool in the department of computer science and engineering in our organization for research purpose. Generally while working on research projects we have some huge datasets and that too from different sources and in different format we have to prepare meaning full reports out of them in order to use them as research findings.

Pros

It can connect to different data sources
Generates report with attractive charts and tables
Very flexible and easily customize-able

Cons

A little programming related to SQL and .NET is required for the efficient use of the tool
Adjusting spaces between multiple rows is a bit difficult task
Documentation part should be improved

Likelihood to Recommend

1. If you are a researcher and you have to review and prepare reports using datasets this is a really helpful tool for you.
2. For a person working in sales; this will help to generate sales reports.
3. It can be use in the finance and accounts departments also for budget sheets, expense sheets etc..

Akhilesh Arya

Assistant Professor at Geetanjali Institute of Technical Studies, Udaipur (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

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SAP Crystal is excellent for report building and aggregations

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

April 6, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SAP Crystal is being used for many solutions we use that just require some form of static reporting and batch reporting. It is used by managers and operations personnel to review data and aggregations.

Pros

Aggregations
Output in various formats
Multiple data sources
Summarizing data

Cons

Maybe a little bit more easy to drag and drop/WYSIWYG capability

Likelihood to Recommend

Great for connecting to multiple data sets, great for reports generation and output in multiple different formats, great for emailing reports to users.

Abdul S. Usmani

IO Cloud Solutions Lead in Information Technology at ConocoPhillips (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

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Crystal Clear Formatted Reports in Secure environment with sharing/distribution capabilities.

Rating: 9 out of 10

December 1, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

All the divisions where the need of formatted reports was there, i.e. in HR departments to get the complete detail of an employee for all past performances indicators, hikes, travel opportunities, PII data or be it on the floor of manufacturing company. In real time replication of data , details of Sales Order/Purchase Orders or internal material movement order were printed in the highly formatted way using Crystal reports detailing each entity/price or other nuance of the type of report it was. Dynamic text of logged in the system was printed in some cases when movement for item was restricted by only some authorized persons so that Security guards can easily check and catch the unwanted movement of product.

Pros

Highly formatted reporting capabilities.
Pixel oriented perfect reporting for printing.
Embedding of dynamic images/logo or barcodes for customized reports.
Easy to share with other users.

Cons

Dragging and dropping the elements into the canvas to fit in pixels is sometime difficult.
Exporting the report in Excel looses formatting.
Learning curve of Crystal is difficult for consultants as it's a bit tricky for data connections.

Likelihood to Recommend

If your organization is needing such a data intelligence solutions where in data reported is important but the way it is presented is also highly important, without even thinking one should go for SAP Crystal Reports. This tool is capable of providing pixel perfect formatted reports giving a very crystal (justifying its name) clear insight of the information represented in form of data. The reports can easily contain company logos/dynamic images or text as per reporting requirements.
Only in case where you need row columns based reporting where you can see data in excel like formats you should not go for SAP Crystal Reports.

Verified User

Consultant in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

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SAP Crystal Reports - A Little Outdated Giant of Reporting

Rating: 5 out of 10

Incentivized

August 13, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

SAP Crystal integrates well with Microsoft Visual Studio so development is easier.
It accepts data in different open formats like XML so it can be used with wide range of data sources like databases or web services or web APIs outputting data in XML format.
A wide variety of reporting formats like List, Cross-Table, Master-Child etc. can be designed. Fields can be formatted in a variety of data formats like Date, Currency etc. Grouping, Summary, Calculated fields can also be added.

Cons

Installing process needs to be more user-friendly. It takes a lot of time. Finding the correct version extension for Visual Studio is harder than you think.
Since it's an old and evolved product, it's stable and complete; however, this has caused it to become bulky and slow in the runtime.
"Help" material is not organized properly. You have to search the community pages if you are using some advanced feature like conditional formatting.

Likelihood to Recommend

Nitin Phansalkar

Owner in Information Technology at SME Focus Solutions (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

15 years of experience

View profile