# SAP Crystal Reports Reviews 2026. Verified Reviews, Pros & Cons | Capterra > Is SAP Crystal Reports the right Reporting solution for you? Explore 174 verified user reviews from people in industries like yours to make a confident choice. Source: https://www.capterra.com/p/212107/SAP-Crystal-Reports/reviews --- SAP Crystal Reports 4.3 (174) [View alternatives](https://www.capterra.com/p/212107/SAP-Crystal-Reports/alternatives/) Provider data verified by our Software Research team, and reviews moderated by our Reviews Verification team. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/our-story/) * * * Last updated March 13th, 2026 # Reviews of SAP Crystal Reports Ease of use 3.7 Customer Service 3.9 ## Pros and Cons in Reviews Gareth R Inventory ManagerApparel & Fashion, 51 - 200 employeesUsed the software for: More than 2 years. “It’s a powerful tool for creating detailed, formatted reports, though it can be a bit complex at first.“ March 19, 2026 FT Francesco T Software DeveloperInformation Technology and Services, 51 - 200 employeesUsed the software for: More than 2 years. “unfriendly interface and difficulties in debugging and creating complex reportsdifficulty managing embedded images and field management logic to review compared to competitive products“ August 30, 2023 Gareth R Inventory ManagerApparel & Fashion, 51 - 200 employeesUsed the software for: More than 2 years. “What I liked most about SAP Crystal Reports was the level of control it gives over both data and presentation.“ March 19, 2026 Heena K Client Services Lead- EMEAMarketing and Advertising, 1,001 - 5,000 employeesUsed the software for: 6-12 months. “a. Way too expensive for unlimited access license, not right for small-med enterprises “ August 18, 2024 RH Richelle H Proposals Project ManagerInformation Technology and Services, 10,001+ employeesUsed the software for: 1-2 years. “SAP Crystal Reports has helped me tremendously with keeping up with our services time and making sure that I am billing correctly.“ June 16, 2025 MA Malik A Senior Software EngineerComputer Software, 2 - 10 employeesUsed the software for: More than 2 years. “there is no propper way to implement wilth angular, if I am wrong please correct me“ July 12, 2022 Garrett V IT OfficerBanking, 11 - 50 employeesUsed the software for: More than 2 years. “My experience with Crystal Reports has been positive and I keep going back to the product if I ever need to develop reporting and I do not have time to code a new program.“ March 5, 2025 LB Liam B IT & Project ManagerTransportation/Trucking/Railroad, 51 - 200 employeesUsed the software for: More than 2 years. “their pricing model is very outdated.“ February 12, 2023 ## Showing most helpful reviews Showing 1-25 of 174 Reviews Sort by: Most Helpful Rating Company Size Reviewer's Role Length of Use Frequency of Use Ramesh M. Associate Manager Computer Software Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Crystal Reports Review" January 15, 2019 5.0 Best class application to build reports , easy and with great features , One of my best development tool Pros Lots of features , using it from years and made 500+ reports , simple loving it Can connect many different databases and support connection providers supports sub reports , drill down reports and Hyperlink Conditional formatting and Reports wizards It's fast and never hangs Good support even with integration with Microsoft tools used for creating dashboard , charts Cons I think it needs some kind of subscription features like SSRS It's little time consuming to format and align tables ,texts ,lines Review Source Caroline I. SAP B1 Consultant Computer Software Used the software for: 6-12 months ### "One of the Best Business Intelligent Reporting Tools for SME's" September 25, 2018 4.0 Crystal Reports helps us have a more detailed look of our company and helps us make informed decisions on what we need to do to improve various components of our business. Pros I like that Crystal reports have a very strong capabilities like sorting of data. You are also able to retrieve most of your company' data for analysis using the tool. Crystal reports helps us create highly formatted and detailed reports - much more that what we are able to get from the SAP Business One software itself. Another awesome thing about Crystal reports is that it is that the process of creating reports is easy once you get used to the mechanisms of the tool. For example, once you pull a certain aspect of a specific set of data, yo can reuse it and only change a variable according to your new needs. Crystal Reports are also pretty affordable for small and medium sized companies. Cons Though the initial purchase of crystal reports can be quite affordable, the tool gets expensive when you need to buy the server which is quite costly but essential for scheduled notifications and other benefits. Review Source MC Miranda C. IT Director Retail Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Outdated software." February 6, 2025 2.0 It used to work fine until the software became outdated. Pros It connected to our POS system to make reports. Cons When we upgraded out POS system we are no longer about to send out reports. It was hard to actually make reports with the report builder. Review Source Rohit S. Operations Manager (Systems - Philanthropy) Used the software for: 2+ years ### "My organization uses Crystal Reports as a primary reporting tool for our Oracle 12c database." October 11, 2017 5.0 Pros It is difficult to make a sophisticated tool like Crystal Reports intuitive, but once you know the layout of how to add and view tables and links, it is quite easy. There is a lot of flexibility as well. Cons There were some hick ups when we upgraded to Oracle 12c, but this could be because we were not using the most current version of Crystal Reports. Review Source Angie B. Accounts Receivable/Payable and Operations Manager Consumer Goods Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Great reporting system! " October 23, 2018 4.0 Pros Crystal reports are a great way to see your data in many different ways. Customization is fairly easy with some training. Cons We have always had an issue with our reports reconciling to our system. They take some training to get them set up correctly. Review Source Carlos R. Head of Industrial Metrology Lab Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Useful tool if you need to process data from a DB and present them in various ways in reports." January 18, 2018 4.0 Pros The Crystal is used in my laboratory to generate the calibration certificates that are delivered to the clients with each team. It allows a great configuration both of appearance and of manupulation and access to databases where all the data is saved. It is really a useful and powerful tool and that can be used with little training, reading the manuals of the software. Cons The software allows you to do many things as you know more about SQL and the like. It is necessary to learn a little about the operation of the DBs to squeeze the potential of the Crystal Review Source Paul Z. Owner and Creative Force Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Top of the line reporting tool" February 27, 2018 5.0 Robust and good looking reports for all areas of my business and clients Pros This report writer is extremely easy to use. It provide good looking reports that are robust and allow easy integration into my visual studio applications. The ease of programming with crystal's api base gives me full control of how my reports are to behave without having to pass parameters in to the report. Cons API programming on subreports can be tough but once learned, it's not too bad. Also, I found dynamic database connections are tricky due when working in domains. But again, once learned, it is easy to continue Review Source Darian R. Cat Herder Design Used the software for: 2+ years ### "It's like Word, but frustrating" June 12, 2018 3.0 Generated invoices and various other documents to support our company. Pros Flexible tie in to your existing system and infrastructure is a plus, it handles many different criteria and complex output. Cons This is a product that has been around a long time. And it does a lot. But it does not look good doing it. The output never quite matches the template thing, and the customization is tedious beyond imagine. Review Source Reginald L. B. Program Coordinator Higher Education Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "A Bit Difficult " March 3, 2020 3.0 Overall I was used to using it, but I am happy we no longer use this system. Pros The main pro for me was it made producing student evaluations easier. They would come out individually per course section. Which saves me time on editing and uploading to faculty review documents. Cons The system was slow and many times did not work. The program my university used didn’t have a download option, we could only select to print. Which meant that the reports were processed and printed I would have to go back and scan them and send them back to me. Review Source Cam P. Network Support Specialist Mental Health Care Used the software for: 6-12 months ### "Great alternative to Pentaho" February 14, 2018 4.0 Pros There are so many features that crystal has over their competitors, many of them being small, yet they have such big impact when reporting. Cons Wish crystal reports wasn't so resource hungry, but besides that everything else seems to be pretty good! Review Source CM Caroline M. SAP B1 Consultant Accounting Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Every ERP Consultant Should Know How to use Crystal Reports" July 13, 2023 5.0 Overall, I love Crystal Reports for SAP, and every day am striving to get better at it Pros Crystal reports helps me create presentable reports both for myself and for my clients.It's a robust and advanced tool that has many capabilities. First of all it is compatible to most of the common database options for ERPS - Microsoft SQL, Oracle, HANA database etc.The drag and drop capability of crystal reports makes it easy to do basic things like adding a new column in an already existing report.Crystal reports has a powerful functionality that enables me to add the desired parameters to my reports. An example of a common parameter in reports is the rate range parameter.Another useful functionality of crystal reports is the fact that you can export your report in various formats like Excel, PDF etcCrystal reports integrates well with other all SAP Products. Cons Since Crystal reports is a complex and robust tool, it has a bit of a steep learning curve. If you want to be able to do powerful and meaningful stuff using crystal reports, you must be willing to put in the work to learn how to use it properly and be willing to put in daily practice so that you do not forget how to use it. Reason for choosing SAP Crystal Reports SAP Query Generator Review Source VR Verified Reviewer SAP Business one Consultant Computer Software Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Dynamic and Interactive Reports" October 4, 2018 5.0 If I need dynamic, impressive reports, SAP crystal reports is very flexible and offers many solutions to various requirements Pros 1\. Depending on the report requirements, Crystal reports has great capabilities to allow you to create all kinds of reports. You can place images, forms etc using OLE. 2. It allows a user to define multiple data sources, making it flexible when transferring to different platforms. 3. It allows a user to conditionally suppress sections within the report which enables certain parameters to be checked in certain sections of the report. 4. It enables the drill-down feature which allows the final user of the report to drill down further within a report to view more specific details. 5. It can do complex queries and allows a user to incorporate SQL statements in a flexible manner. 6. A user can create sub-reports, group selections and easily format various sections of the report in order to achieve different requirements. 7. It allows format parameters to be used easily and flexibly e.g. one item on the report can be bolded and displayed in italics due to specified parameters. 8. Supports different types of data sources e.g. HANA, MS SQL, Excel etc Cons 1\. For a new user, it might be challenging to create new reports and one might not fully utilize most of the features. 2. Graphical features such as charts are not as enhanced as in other reporting tools. 3. Development of complex reports might take a bit of time depending on the user's experience level 4. When you export a report created with crystal reports to excel, there is a lot of distortion depending on the excel format. It will take a lot of trial and error and eventually, the data on the report is hard to edit on excel. 5. It might crash often after a software update. Review Source VR Verified Reviewer Consultor de Servicio y Soporte Information Technology and Services Used the software for: 2+ years ### " A wonderful tool for the generation of reports." December 13, 2018 5.0 I use SAP Crystal Reports to generate different statistics about the problems and requests in the technological area of ​​the company, allowing to customize each report based on the characteristics and hierarchy of the end users. Pros What I like most about this software is that it allows you to quickly transform any data source into interactive and relevant content for different users. Also integrates design, modification and visualization capabilities in different types of applications such as .NET, Java or COM and allows end users to access and interact with reports through different means such as Web portals, mobile devices and Microsoft Office documents. In general, it is an incredible tool for the generation of different types of reports, providing the option to widely customize each of them. Cons Given the amount of tools and options that it offers, its handling is sometimes a bit complex, especially for users with little technical knowledge. Review Source RN Raghavendar N. Sr. BI consultant Information Technology and Services Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Picture perfect reporting tool " March 30, 2019 4.0 We use this for some of the reports where user is looking for a particular report but not for data extract. Well, most of the reporting is done on Universe and WebI, based on the need we also use Crystal reporting. We have multiple options for defining the formula, including mathematical and logical functions. We can use advanced data analytics and visualization in the new version but not yet explored by me. Pros Crystal report are canned report, formatted report for printing purpose, like Legal reports, they has to be printed in predefined format, with cell size/cell width or logo etc. each and everything is modifiable). This tool is picture perfect reports since each thing is customizable. You can connect to multiple databases and send the free hand SQL for querying the data Cons The security implementation is not good. Since query is done without any middle layer like BO universe, report can bring lot of data, no control on data level security etc. Also, the interface is not as good as Web Intelligence or other reporting components. Look and feel while developing is also not very friendly. Lot of adjustment to be made to make a template. Of late there are no much improvements made and it is costly for a customer to get the report created via a development project. Review Source VR Verified Reviewer Systems Analyst Fund-Raising Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Powerful and easy to use" March 12, 2019 5.0 I love working with it and when I retire, I am going to come back as a Crystal Reports programmer. :) Pros I love how I can take data from our database and present it in a pleasing way for our users. I have been using Crystal Reports for almost 20 years and find it very powerful. I can build a report very quickly and a few simple format changes and make it look professional. I developed a program to run a series of reports with parameters passed from the program. I can do our month end process in minutes instead of running 100 reports one at a time. So it is great for creating a report and easy to add to a .NET program to be run automagically. Pretty cool! Cons It can be time consuming to build a complex report with lots of formulas. Not a fault of the software. Just the process is long at times when you have over 100 formulas. It would be nice if there was a feature where you could easily clone a formula and then change it quickly for each situation. Although, maybe in a newer version of CR this might be possible. Review Source MK Musfir K. Manager Consumer Goods Used the software for: 2+ years ### "SAP Crystal is the Best Software for Analyzing " January 11, 2023 5.0 It's a very good software for any industry to know and find daily analysis.Can get exact and true status. we don't have to go to warehouse or plant as sitting in office we can know the production of plant and dispatch from warehouse Pros Customized ReportsTrack exact status of InventoryShow clear picture of inventory, and cash outflow and in process. Cons some time reports take time to download.can only be run at the system where it is installed not able to access and use on Smart Phone. Review Source VR Verified Reviewer Programmer Analyst Banking Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Crystal Reports" January 17, 2020 2.0 I would not recommend using this product as it is extremely old and outdated. Pros There is nothing about this product that is useful. It may have been a good reporting tool before, but there are many other products out there now that would be better to use. Cons It is a very convoluted and tricky system to figure out how to use, it takes forever to figure out how to use. It is very old school and inundated. Review Source MG Mike G. Project Manager Government Administration Used the software for: 2+ years ### "A bit of a learning curve, but a life saver!" December 5, 2016 4.0 My job involves working with similar data that is housed in different databases, both internal and external. Before Crystal Reports, I would pull several reports out of several databases, bring the data into Excel and run pivot tables, vlookups, etc... to be able to see the relations in the data. With Crystal Reports, as long as I have a common data field, (such as a part number) I can combine data from several different sources and run reports based on the related data. This is a much easier method. For example, I am now able to run a single report that shows our current orders, the current inventory available to fill those orders and based on that, make a single order to our vendor for re-stocking. This used to take at least 2 hours out of my day... now it is quick enough that I run the report twice a day and very rarely have stock outtages. Pros The ability to pull and parse data from several different data sources and report on the related data sets Cons The learning curve is a bit steep, but once you set up a report, it can be re-run easily any time and as often as you need, quickly and cleanly. Review Source VR Verified Reviewer Associate Consultant Used the software for: 2+ years ### "One of the very powerful and traditional reporting tools" April 27, 2018 4.0 Pros This is the traditional reporting tool that is used in many financial organisations.I have used SAP Crystal Reports 10 in my organisation. We can design highly formatted reports using this tool.It can connect to multiple datasources like ODBC,OLE DB etc.we can create Reports with different formats like pdf,csv,txt,xls etc. we can also create html,xml reports. The price of this tool is also inexpensive. We can create detailed graphs,dashboards. Cons more features can be added in it to make the reports more attractive. Customer support is not that good.you have to be good in report designing and know sql to work on crystal reports. Review Source VR Verified Reviewer Product Owner Business Supplies and Equipment Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Comprehensive reporting tool for SQL datasets" May 1, 2019 5.0 Crystal Reports provides us with the majority of our day to day business documentation, without crystal reports we would struggle to make informed decisions. Pros It provides a safe and secure way of querying SQL databases, and creating business reports. Cons Some of the features feel a little dated, designing reports that look good as well as making sure they include the right information requires a degree of skill and patience. You need to spend time learning how the specific program works, which is how it always used to be with all software, but nowadays users expect to be able to get going straight away. Review Source OP Oleg P. Financial Analyst Banking Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Great tool to build customized reports from Databases" May 16, 2022 5.0 I've been using Crystal Reports in my different roles, on and off for many years, and it is the best application of its kind out there. If you want simple no frills reporting, you can link your database to MS Access, and use built in reports there; but for advanced, professional reports you want to present to important clients or senior management, Crystal Reports is your tool. Pros If you are familiar with MS Access, and it's built in Reports - Crystal Reports is similar feature, but much fancier, and a lot more flexible. You can built any kind of reports from your SQL Server Database. You can either do filtering in the report, or use custom view from SQL Server. Unlike MS Access where reports are simply nice - these look professional. (I mainly used it with SQL Server, but it also works with MySQL, Oracle, MS Excel, etc) Cons I haven't had any issues, but I heard people say that their support is not very responsive. I was able to built some very sophisticated reports, and never needed any support. Review Source AN ANDREW N. Planning Manager Cosmetics Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Good Software, could be a bit more intuitive " September 19, 2019 4.0 Crystal Reports is a key software for our business. We use it daily to streamline data gathering in order to make sound business decisions and plan effectively. Pros The best thing about the software is the variety that it offers in terms of report writing. You can link many different databases together and pull them all into one report. Cons The software is fairly complex and could be a bit more intuitive. I am using an older version, so it is possible that the new versions are better. The software is quite costly. Review Source AD Allan D. Head of Information Security Education Management Used the software for: 2+ years ### "A mature reporting suite" February 16, 2024 5.0 Pros It did exactly what was advertised which was great Cons It is very inflexible with Intergrations Review Source VR Verified Reviewer Patient experience specialist Hospital & Health Care Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Crystal reports " August 20, 2018 5.0 Pros I have to say this is a great product only thing is you need to take competency classes or a guide book to be really proficient in it. There so many great features and capabilities in crystal report. I use it to digest excel as a data base and create beautiful visual reports. They're useful in this application. Cons To be efficient you need some kind of formal training or education. A guidebook is effect but really need hands on training to create formulas and arguments to create meaningful reports. Review Source Aimee G. Project Manager Computer Software Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Easy to use reporting tool" January 9, 2018 5.0 Pros We use Crystal as our software reporting tool. It is easy to design, format, and implement custom dynamic group-by reports. We prefer this product over Microsoft's SSRS reporting tool. Cons I wish it was easier to design a report that had pdf fill-in functionality, aka captured checklists and signatures Review Source Similar Products Featured ## Related categories [Reporting](https://www.capterra.com/reporting-software/)[Data Visualization](https://www.capterra.com/data-visualization-software/)[Business Intelligence](https://www.capterra.com/business-intelligence-software/) ## Send me user reviews about this product ### Fill out the form and we'll send a list of the top-rated software based on real user reviews directly to your inbox.