Crystal Reports with SAP Utilities - Make the Most of It with #SAP ERP and S/4HANA

[TammyPowlas]

We have been using Crystal Reports embedded inside SAP ERP for several years.  One of the drawbacks has been not being able to run the Crystal viewer inside SAP in the background.  As a result, for several years, I thought we could not use it with SAP IS-U (utilities) data, which for most utilities is a large amount of data.

Then we received a requirement for something like a "fact sheet" - to print a sheet of information showing the customer's account number, address, how their water and sewer rates are calculated, and the total bill.  Of course you can see this inside the SAP ERP system, but it is not user friendly and perhaps you want to send something more formal for FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests.

Here is the final output:

So the users can view this on the screen, print it out, send it to the customer.

The above shows the selection screen; the contract account is required; looking back, I should have changed the selection criteria to one contract account to ensure the likelihood it won't run in the background.

 

Above shows the output of the transaction - ALV is the source of data to Crystal Reports.

The data on the screen above, is not that easy to consume as a user.

We also plan to add it to the CIC transaction

Prerequisites:

1. Follow SAP Note 1353044


2. SAP Crystal Reports Viewer runs inside SAP ERP (and S/4HANA on premise)


3. Run the installation file (xSAPCRVAdpt.exe) of the Crystal Reports Viewer for SAP Business Suite Apps


4. ALV (ABAP List Viewer) has several output options – PDF, Excel, XML, and with enhancement package 5, SAP Crystal Reports

Using Crystal Reports 2016 or Crystal Reports 2020 (just released) you can make some cosmetic changes such as underlining or formulas:

 

BONUS:

It works with SAP Business Client (formerly known as "NWBC"/NetWeaver Business Client):

What do you think?