Crystal Reports vs. MS Word Templates for Invoices

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Our company has always used Crystal Reports but we are looking to switch to a more modern system. MS Word Templates seem to hold the best features for actually creating the forms, but what functionality can we expect to lose? Has anyone successfully switched over before?

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Josh P 2,895 on at

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You will lose a lot of functionality in using SQL unless you like to use the GP Report Writer. Word templates are only a wrapper to the default reports generated in GP. Crystal Reports are still valid in many cases for report writing against databases. Another option is SSRS, but SSRS reports lack printable report writing capabilities.

The interface for SSRS reports though is pretty intuitive, and if you have a copy of SQL, SSRS reports are free since they are part of the SQL product.

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Frank Hamelly | MVP... 46,625 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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My vote would go to Crystal, hands down, for ease of developing forms and reports. The problem with SSRS reports is you have to have a pretty good working knowledge of SQL to develop more complex reports, whereas Crystal is a bit more intuitive for the average GP user.

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soma 24,410 on at

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I would suggest you to use SSRS or Crystal report. These two report are pretty good for getting records from SQL and can design as we expected. But, Word Templates are depends on the GP report writer report and we need to create template for the same. Its also has some difficulties for some scenarios.

Hope this helps!!!

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Victoria Yudin 22,769 on at

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Parker,

Disclaimer first - I am biased because my company makes a solution for printing Crystal and SSRS reports from Dynamics GP. That said, I don't think Word Templates can hold a candle to the functionality available in Crystal Reports. When someone asks me what reporting tool to use for a particular need, Word Templates is not even an option for the answer, as it is not a reporting tool.

Typically, for invoices, I would recommend Crystal Reports over SSRS because in Crystal you can much more easily control the position of everything on the invoice. And if you're already using Crystal Reports, it most likely means you're already somewhat familiar with it, so it makes more sense to keep using what you already know and have.

Is there something about your current invoices using Crystal Reports that makes it seem 'less modern'? Perhaps this group can help you address those concerns?

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Community Member on at

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Parker and I work together and he was given this project by one of the Execs. I think it stems from the fact Crystal Reports is so much more full-featured than Word Templates; if we ever need to make changes in Crystal, we have to call in a consultant instead of just doing the changes ourselves, and I think that's what they're trying to eliminate.

As Victoria hit on, we're using Crystal Reports for our invoices and some folks that work here want to be able to change Word template rather than purchase a copy of Crystal.

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Frank Hamelly | MVP... 46,625 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Honestly Carl, it's easier to do in Crystal than in Word Templates . . .

I would suggest someone in your organization becoming a Crystal guru, of sorts.

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Victoria Yudin 22,769 on at

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Carl,

Thanks for the additional info. IMHO, Crystal is about 100 times easier to use than Report Writer, even without having to add in Word Templates. Then it might be 200 times. :-)

If you're talking about small changes, you could probably get an hour or two of Crystal Reports training and be self sufficient with no problem. For larger changes, unless you had someone extremely well versed in Dex and/or Report Writer in-house, you would probably still need a consultant and it would likely take a lot longer (ie cost more) for any significant changes in Report Writer than it would in Crystal.

Of course these are very general statements, without knowing anything about your environment, needs or expertise.

As far as multiple people being able to change the Word Template vs. Crystal Reports - again just my 2 cents, but I would be really careful with that. Using either Crystal or Word/Report Writer. Most companies do not want to have multiple versions of invoice formats floating around with no central control. That often results in an inconsistent message presented to customers and a possibly big mess in your GP environment longer term which can easily turn into a nightmare when someone leaves or when you're doing a GP upgrade. What I typically see is one or two licenses of Crystal installed internally for the person (or team) working on changing invoices and other reports. The licenses are $500 retail each. Not saying that's nothing, but it will probably save you that money the first time you run across a difficult requirement in Report Writer.

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