I recently had a similar issue, where I needed version 8.5. You can buy old versions directly from Business Object, so you may want to consider doing that so you have a developer copy for yourself. I imagine that the cost of the consultant would have been higher than buying it.
I too had the same issue... it HAD to be Crystal 8.5, so that users used only the main application to launch their reports. Which was frustrating since we currently had and are still running version 6, 8, 10 and 11 already, and the idea that it couldn't use a different version or viewer was ridiculous to me. Really.... who puts out 'new' software with a version of Crystal so old you can't write custom reports for it.
You'd think you could be pressuring the vendor of the shop manager program too... if it's done in MSAccess, it's likely just got a run line in it to launch an old version, that should be easy to modify so you could use a later version of Crystal.