[2] Crystal Services Inc. marketed the product[3] (originally called "Quik Reports") when they could not find a suitable commercial report writer for an accounting software they developed add-on products for, which was ACCPAC Plus for DOS (later acquired by Sage).

[4] After producing versions 1.0 through 3.0, Crystal Services was acquired by Seagate Technology in 1994.

SAP acquired BusinessObjects on October 8, 2007, and released Crystal Reports 2011 (version 14) on May 3, 2011.

Introduced with the release of Crystal Reports 2011 (version 14.0), the read-only .rptr file extension option allows for viewing, but cannot be modified once exported.

[6] Several other applications, including Microsoft Visual Studio versions 2003 through 2008, and Borland Delphi, at one time bundled an OEM version of Crystal Reports as a general purpose reporting tool.