The Crystal Reports Clock Is Running - Here's Your Path Forward.

Author: David Kidd, Delivery Director, Cooper Software

Welcome back to Power Plays, a series showcasing strategic developments and proven approaches from Cooper Software that are delivering real results for IFS customers.

The Current Landscape

Crystal Reports has been a cornerstone of IFS operational reporting for over two decades. These reports handle critical day-to-day functions, from invoice processing and pick lists to complex international shipping documentation with region-specific terms and conditions. For many organisations, they bridge the gap between IFS's standard out-of-the-box reports and the specific, complex requirements that keep the business running.

The timeline is set. The question now is not whether to act, but how.

Understanding Your Replacement Options

Before you can plan a transition, it helps to understand what you're transitioning to. The answer depends on report type.

For Operational Reports, the main paths are IFS Report Studio, the IFS External Reports Gateway, and other external reporting tools where the use case warrants it.

For Quick Reports, the options are broader: converting to an Operational Report, converting to Report Studio, using IFS Lobbies for ad-hoc needs, IFS Query Designer, or Power BI and other third-party BI tools for more analytical requirements.

Not every Crystal Report needs a like-for-like conversion. Part of any good assessment is identifying which reports genuinely need advanced formatting and complex logic, and which can be retired, simplified, or replaced with something more maintainable.

How Conversion Actually Works

One of the most common concerns we hear is around the effort involved in converting a large Crystal Reports estate. The reality is more manageable than most people expect, particularly for output document reports.

We have built an internal Crystal-to-Report-Studio conversion tool that we use in our delivery work. It is not a self-service product, but it is operational and forms the backbone of how we run conversions efficiently.

For simple output document reports, technical conversion is achievable with very little change. Our typical end-to-end cycle, covering convert, review, unit test, deploy to development, approve, and promote to live, runs at around half a day per report.

More complex reports, those involving sub-reports, multiple data sources, formula-heavy logic, or sources outside of standard report views, require a more targeted approach. Rather than treating these as full rebuilds, we identify exactly what has not converted cleanly and apply a pointed uplift on those specific elements. We scope these on inspection, so you get an honest estimate based on what is there, not a blanket figure.

Understanding Your Current Position

The first step in any transition is knowing what you are dealing with. Crystal Reports implementations vary considerably across organisations. We have seen customers with fewer than five reports and others managing well over two hundred. That variance matters, because it determines the pace and approach.

As a rough guide:

• Light users, with one to ten reports, have the most flexibility in terms of timing, but they still have a hard deadline. A clear plan now avoids a last-minute scramble later
• Moderate users, with ten to fifty reports, should be starting their assessment now if they have not already. Prioritisation is important here, as not all reports carry equal business risk
• Heavy users, with fifty or more reports, need to treat this as a project in its own right. Conversion at this scale, even with efficient tooling, takes time, and 26R2 is not far away.

The Cooper Software Reporting Audit

The right starting point for most organisations is a clear picture of what they have. Our reporting audit delivers exactly that.

We provide a complete inventory of current Crystal Reports usage across your organisation, an assessment of business criticality, complexity, and usage patterns for each report, identification of reports suitable for standard IFS functionality, Power BI, or other alternatives, conversion timelines and resource estimates for necessary work, and a recommended reporting strategy aligned with IFS's platform direction.

For managed service customers, much of this can be done remotely using our existing access, making it quick to turn around. For other clients, we structure it as a focused two to three-day engagement.

With 26R2 around six months away, now is the point to act. An audit is not a nice-to-have at this stage. It is the foundation for making sensible decisions under a real deadline.

What Good Looks Like

The quality of a Crystal Reports conversion is not just a question of whether the output looks right. It is about whether the underlying report logic has been properly understood, whether the IFS data model has been applied correctly, and whether the result will hold up in live operation.

That is where depth of IFS expertise matters. Converting a report without understanding IFS's native reporting architecture, its view structures, its document handling conventions, can produce something that looks fine in testing and causes problems in production. Our approach is built on years of IFS-specific delivery experience, and that shows in the quality of what we produce.

Looking Ahead

The Crystal Reports transition is real, the timeline is confirmed, and the organisations that approach it with a clear plan will come out of it in better shape than those that do not. Used well, this is also an opportunity to review your reporting estate, retire what is no longer needed, and build something more maintainable going forward.

Ready to understand your position? Contact Cooper Software to arrange your reporting audit. We will give you a clear picture of what you have, what needs to move, and what the sensible path forward looks like.

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