It may be necessary during the initial planning phases for the laboratory to estimate the costs of the proposed implementation project. In many cases, it is extremely difficult to accurate calculate the true budget of the project because all of the costs may not be known at the outset. Moreover, the expenses associated with staff time, IT services, software, licensing, HIE connectivity, consultants, developers, etc., will differ for every laboratory. For some laboratories, the effective cost for certain services will be $0. Despite the inherent challenges, the Virginia DCLS has shared an example budget for the Virginia NBS implementation project that offers estimates of the time required from both the Division’s IT and laboratory teams.