SAP Crystal Reports reviews

Fully customizable Report tool suits for the entire company. Even without an expert in programing Crystal Report can be used to deliver decision-making reports. Very easy configuration with MS SQL, MS Access, and much more other databases.

Could not notice any big cons up to now.

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!

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.

The ability to customize reports is helpful.
Comprehensive. The system has the ability to report on many aspects of business.

Difficult to learn report writing requirements.
Trial and error yields unproductive data reporting.
Once parameters are established for requests, downloading data fields is sometimes slow.

simple and cost effective
tight integration with sap
easy deployment and scalability

user interactiveness on report designs, lacks ease of use for end users to build reports of their own.

Connects to SQL and it gets the data as needed, and with the right formulas and know how, you can customize the reports to your liking get as specific as you need.

Dated interface and not the most user friendly. If you have never used it, getting it set up and running might be a little confusing, but if you know some basic SQL, you can make it do what you need.

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.

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.

Its comprehensive, well know and used across industries so many designers. Basic graphing but robust reporting.

Could be more user friendly, you need about six months to get good at it

- customers can display their company's reports
- easy to adjust if the customer wants a report to be changed

- at this moment in time I have nothing bad to say about this software

It provides a safe and secure way of querying SQL databases, and creating business reports.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

SAP Crystal Reports is one of the tools I most enjoy working with. Sincerely. It's linked to SQL - we can get our signature on a report that looks vulgar - through code. We were able to do 1001 things, and really have a style. It is an art, combined with the fact that it is programming. It is fabulous. I really love working with Crystal - it's my weakness of how good it is.

Like any software, if the code is too heavy, or if it is a very complex procedure, crashes a little. But nothing special. Tolerable and irrelevant in the case.

Very advance reporting tool and make life easier for people who are dealing with data sets and reporting.
Can create reports with complex filters and formulas. Also crystal reports are capable of giving attractive charts, tables and linked reports.
Also can be configure from different Data sources like MSSQL.

Run time version and desktop version have some misalignment issue. But it can be sorted out in the coding level. And the option call Cross tab ,its a dynamically expanding table in crystal and there you can't have serial number when its comes to number of values listed.

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.

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.

The flexibility of what I can do with my data is invaluable. I am able to create custom reports to extract necessary information from our databases.

The newer version of this software does not allow me to open a new report while another report is generating, but it does so more quickly than the old software, so it's a give and take.

1) Ease of use.
2) Clean and standard reporting.
3) Multitude of ways to deliver your reports. Email, ftp, on demand, etc.

1) Minor annoyances that can crop up out of nowhere; typically involving formatting.
2) For as mature as the product is, it still tends to crash more often than I would like.

The software is very robust and has a lot of tools that make creating detailed reports very easy. The ability to attach to data sources make it a great tool.

The interface can be a little daunting for new users and expanded functionality can require more detailed programming knowledge.

Love the ability to create forms like invoices, statements, receipts, etc. You can add images to the reports. Easy to suppress sections depending on page.

The software doesn't allow for really complex business rules. To get great reports, you need to setup views in your database instead of doing it within the reporting tool. It doesn't always easily swap from production to test databases. Often times, I have to go back in and remap the tables or views manually. Thank goodness for the "View SQL" option, where you can see what database it is using for each table/view. When they are out of sync, it's a long, manual process to fix.

I had to use a consultant to help me write the queries I use. We use them everyday to run our business and the work perfectly.

Very difficult to learn the structure and commands. I felt a lot like I needed to understand coding. I resorted to hiring a professional to write our queries.

Ease of use. Customized reporting. Full integration with all systems. Stability. Automated schedule. Simple!

There’s not much I find wrong with this program. As an operator I wish the reports were visible off site. It may be the way our company is setup.

The most powerful tool to create reports, you can modify the reports at any time and there is no need to re-deliver the application / software system. Easy to integrate with other software.

There is nothing I don't like at this moment.

All the reporting and data visualization features are there to support huge enterprise projects

It is a bit expensive compared to other products

I've used versions 5 up to 2013 - the power to do amazing formulas and formatting is awesome (from about 2010 to version 2013). Also, the ability to connect to almost any data source is great.

It's not intuitive, but once you learn where to find things, it's a powerful reporting tool.

I liked its compatibility with many software, especially those based on C# and ASP.NET, so it is indispensable in our software for extracting and analyzing reports .

I don't find any major downsides, but the user interface should be improved to be easier and more friendly .

Crystal Reports has more advanced functionality that other reporting tools just don't have. When I have a complex report to write, I go to crystal to write it.

It is a little complex so there is a strong learning curve to be able to use it, however it is extremely powerful software. You also pay for what you get, so crystal is a little expensive and may not be worth the money if you only need simple reports.