It emerged last week the Dunedin City Council's bill for the world cup had doubled to $760,000.
The council originally set aside $200,000 over two years to meet tournament costs, and had planned to draw on other council budgets to help meet additional costs.
Council strategy and development general manager Sue Bidrose told a finance, strategy and development committee yesterday staff could have written a report that said the bill was $400,000.
Staff could have massaged the figures to make them lower, but chief executive Paul Orders had demanded clear and transparent budgets that showed costs in their entirety.
That meant the cost of work staff would have been involved in anyway had been included, as was "every single thing we did solely because of the World Cup".
"This is a full and complete account."
Dr Bidrose said other councils had not yet tallied their costs when her report was written.
But Nelson, for instance, which had three games compared with Dunedin's four, had spent $1,760,000.
The newspaper headlines should have read "Dunedin does it cheapest", she said.
Cr Staynes said the result was "accolades from around the world that we were the highlight of the rugby-hosting cities".
A lot had been made of what had been called "a significant overspend", but Cr Staynes said he did not believe that was the case.
There were departments, such as traffic, that had to spend money during the event, he said.
Dr Bidrose's report said traffic management planning and transport costs were paid from an existing $256,000 budget.
Dunedin now had a framework for all major events the city might host in future.
Mayor Dave Cull said everyone involved, from staff to volunteers, should be congratulated.
