We aim to elucidate the low-energy electronic structure of two distinct dysprosium bisphthalocyanine single-molecule magnets by direct observation of crystal field excitations by inelastic neutron scattering. These molecular systems are currently the subject of intense research because they show slow relaxation of the magnetization at low temperatures, which has led to them being proposed as novel materials for magnetic data storage devices. Precise determination of the excitation energies will allow the extraction of accurate crystal field splitting parameters, will clarify the issue why these particular molecules show slow relaxation of the magnetization at much higher temperatures than other dysprosium complexes.