This manual goes beyond traditional guidelines on cost analysis by providing practical options to overcome real-life challenges associated with costing in low- and middle-income countries. These challenges include resource limitations, data constraints, the differing concerns of public and private providers, and weak cross-institutional collaboration.

The manual also includes a companion toolkit with tools and templates (TORs, data collection instruments, QA guides, training manuals, costing and simulation models, and other resources) used by the authors that practitioners from other countries can adapt to their own unique contexts. It can be found online at: https://www.jointlearningnetwork.org/resources/costing-manual-tool-kit/

The Costing Manual is accompanied by an online course (also included in the Tool Repository), developed by the World Bank’s Open Learning Center and designed specifically for the busy practitioner in mind.