diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 966865afe..d90c0acfb 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ Version: 1.17.99
 Title: Extension of `data.frame`
 Depends: R (>= 3.4.0)
 Imports: methods
-Suggests: bit64 (>= 4.0.0), bit (>= 4.0.4), R.utils (>= 2.13.0), xts, zoo (>= 1.8-1), yaml, knitr, markdown
+Suggests: bit64 (>= 4.0.0), bit (>= 4.0.4), R.utils (>= 2.13.0), xts, zoo (>= 1.8-1), yaml, knitr, markdown, tools, parallel
 Description: Fast aggregation of large data (e.g. 100GB in RAM), fast ordered joins, fast add/modify/delete of columns by group using no copies at all, list columns, friendly and fast character-separated-value read/write. Offers a natural and flexible syntax, for faster development.
 License: MPL-2.0 | file LICENSE
 URL: https://r-datatable.com, https://Rdatatable.gitlab.io/data.table, https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 2b3c2b299..ba330d545 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -367,6 +367,8 @@ See [#2611](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/issues/2611) for details. T
 
 7. In rare situations a data.table object may lose its internal attribute that holds a self-reference. New helper function `.selfref.ok()` tests just that. It is only intended for technical use cases. See manual for examples.
 
+8. `tools` and `parallel` packages added to Suggests, [#7288](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/issues/7288). These are used internally by `fread` and `frollapply`. Thanks to @jangorecki for identifying this dependency issue.
+
 ## data.table [v1.17.8](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/milestone/41) (6 July 2025)
 
 1. Internal functions used to signal errors are now marked as non-returning, silencing a compiler warning about potentially unchecked allocation failure. Thanks to Prof. Brian D. Ripley for the report and @aitap for the fix, [#7070](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/pull/7070).
diff --git a/inst/tests/tests.Rraw b/inst/tests/tests.Rraw
index 7be4af235..92143340f 100644
--- a/inst/tests/tests.Rraw
+++ b/inst/tests/tests.Rraw
@@ -21855,3 +21855,24 @@ test(2344.03, setkey(d1[, .(V1, label = c("one", "zero", "one"), V2)][data.table
 # keep sub-key in case of multiple keys, even with new columns and changing column order
 DT = data.table(V1 = 1:2, V2 = 3:4, V3 = 5:6, key = c("V1", "V2", "V3"))
 test(2344.04, key(DT[, .(V4 = c("b", "a"), V2, V5 = c("y", "x"), V1)]), c("V1", "V2"))
+
+# #7288: tools and parallel packages used by fread and frollapply
+# Test 1: fread works when tools package is available
+test(2345.01, {
+  tf = tempfile()
+  writeLines("a,b,c\n1,2,3\n4,5,6", tf)
+  dt = fread(tf)
+  unlink(tf)
+  all(dim(dt) == c(2,3))
+}, TRUE)
+# Test 2: frollapply works when parallel package is available
+test(2345.02, {
+  x = 1:20
+  result = frollapply(x, N=5, FUN=sum)
+  is.numeric(result) && length(result) == 20
+}, TRUE)
+# Test 3: Check tools namespace is available
+test(2345.03, requireNamespace("tools", quietly=TRUE), TRUE)
+# Test 4: Check parallel namespace is available
+test(2345.04, requireNamespace("parallel", quietly=TRUE), TRUE)
+