A Simple Cost Reporting Table

CEGA’s Cost Reporting Table

Cost numbers without provenance and detail are practically meaningless because the number of unknowns makes the estimates too uncertain to use. Is it an average cost or a marginal cost? Did the analyst include or exclude overheads? Was the number of participants or the number of beneficiaries used to calculate the cost per person?

Researchers may not be aware of the reporting details that are needed to reformulate costs and ensure their comparability for inclusion in comparative cost-effectiveness, systematic review, or meta-analysis–which is the primary motivation for us to develop a tool for reporting costs.

CEGA’s cost reporting tool enables the systematic reporting of financial, research, and social costs of the intervention being evaluated. The reporting tool complements available guidance for conducting costing studies [1] and guidance for evaluating the quality of economic evaluation [2] with a tailored approach to meet the specific needs of economists who wish to (or are required to) report costs in the context of an RCT, Brown & McIntosh (2025).

How to use CEGA’s Cost Reporting Table

1. Begin with the end in mind. First review the cost reporting table to determine what cost and intervention data will be needed to complete it. 
2. At the start of the study, draft cost research questions and use the Costing Pre-Analysis Plan template to operationalize core aspects of the costing and to document the cost study design, data sources and methods. This can be completed at the same time the study PAP is written. 
3. Share and socialize the Costing PAP with the cost study stakeholders.
4. Meet with implementing partners and arrange data-sharing agreements; ensure the data-generating process will produce the information needed to complete the reporting table. 
5. Collect and review the cost data as the implementation is carried out and track key events that coincide with potential changes in the spend over time. 
6. Collect cost data sets and write code to analyze the data, meet with accounting teams to update data, codes, and gather additional information.
7. Analyze the data and generate the reporting tables. Conduct the CEA as proposed for the RCT.
8. Append the table to the published RCT, consider how to publish the costing study and data set

If you have questions or feedback, we hope you’ll reach out and consider joining our Costing Community of Practice.

Contact

cega-costing@berkeley.edu
lizbrown@berkeley.edu

Footnotes

1. Dhaliwal et al. 2013; Anna Vassall, et al. 2017; Glandon et al. 2022; Levin et al. 2018
2. Husereau, D, Drummond, M., and Augustovski, F. 2022; Anderson et al. 2018; Evers et al. 2005; Watts and Li 2019