
The Excel Factor is John Hackwood, who provides Excel spreadsheet based solutions to business large & small.
Hello, The Excel Factor is a small advanced Excel spreadsheet solutions and financial modelling business. Very small. In fact, its just me, John Hackwood, a passionate Excel Financial Modelling Consultant & Excel Analyst. with a strong finance & international resource marketing background having worked over many years in 3 of the world’s top 5 mining houses namely BHP, Anglo American and Rio Tinto (Comalco) as well as manufacturing much earlier in my career (Rheem Australia).
I love what I do, happy to stay small and work from home wherever I can. I can help you get a handle on your business financial modelling projects, reporting and spreadsheet problems or Excel automation for admin task or Excel data projects quickly. I love helping people solving problems and increasing their effectiveness and productivity with what I know works so well, Excel financial modelling, Excel Macros or VBA, Excel Dashboards, Power Query, Power Pivot, Pivot Tables, Conditional Formatting and advanced Excel formulas.
I am based in the Tweed Shire NSW but work with clients on the Gold Coast, Yatala, Logan and Brisbane, QLD Australia as well as Far North Coast NSW clients in on the Tweed Coast and Lismore NSW.
You can see my work history at Linked In. Contact me, there is no obligation
I have two main areas of experience and expertise:
- Writing Excel based solutions tailored to your business needs using VBA Programming, Power Query, User Defined Functions (UDFs), Financial Modelling, Advanced Formulas, User Forms, interactive models, charts & dashboards and Pivot Tables. I have the advantage of having theses advanced skills AND strong, practical, business experience. Click to see more.
- Credit and Trade Finance policy and operations. Click to see more on this.
My background is from international business having held several senior roles in marketing departments of large resource companies such as BHPB, Anglo Amercian, Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) and Comalco. I have a Bachelor of Business degree and a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment. My strengths are in highly advanced Excel and Financial Modelling skills. But I also enhance these strengths with strong career experience and the managerial and soft skills required at senior levels in credit risk management, trade finance, export contract administration/drafting, business analysis and commodity marketing risk management.

The immortal Lotus 123!
I am a long time spreadsheet enthusiast passionate about implementing Excel Solutions or spreadsheet based solutions even before there was an Excel! Lotus 123 was amazing enough in those early days and if you were an Accountant as I was then, the advent of Lotus 123 plus WYSIWYG and Sideways just revolutionised your job adding creativity, better analysis and even programming to an otherwise pretty dull work life. Then along came Excel and it was immediately obvious how good this product was which has gotten better and better with each release and 2010 onwards truly delivers incredible computer power to everyday users.

The revolutionary ribbon from 2007 looking better in above 2010
So I have been working with spreadsheets and Excel solutions for a long time now. I loved Excel 2003 and Excel 2010 and currently loving Office 365 Excel and it’s incredible built in features like Power Query & PowerPivot and Power BI.
I can help large, medium or small businesses build capability quickly using advanced Excel & VBA programming skills. I enjoy writing Excel based applications or Excel solutions and financial modelling for any area of business or industry drawing on my long finance /marketing career experience in Resources. I am very interested in the exciting new field of Business Intelligence & Power Query and Power Pivot projects.
I have a special interest in assisting Dental, Medical and Veterinary Practices having had direct experience over the last 5 years on many projects that facilitated management of practices effectively and more profitably by cutting costs on automating repetitive tasks and producing the right reports at the right time. Since 2005 I have been a co-owner of a dental practice and have been busy with automating time consuming tasks and implementing tailored solutions to help our practices run more efficiently and profitably. See more detail on this below.
From 2001-2004, I was Credit Controller in BHP’s Singapore marketing hub (one of two Global hubs). I was responsible for coal, iron ore and manganese payment risk and was exposed to the myriad of different contract, risk and trade arrangements. On returning to Australia in 2004, I joined Anglo American and became their Business Planning & Support Leader for Marketing, responsible for Business Planning (sales planning, contract performance, business plans and short term forecasts for global Australian exports), Credit Risk and Risk Management.
The last few years (since mid 2008), I have been involved part time in my own business, a very busy dental practice, as my wife is a dentist which we sold in Jan 2016. Being my own boss, I have had a lot of flexibility to take on part time or project related roles. I worked at PWC as a consultant and worked on credit policy and assessment and marketing re-structure projects. I also worked on projects as an independent consultant such as being part of a due diligence team for Arcelor Mittal looking at a mine investment, doing credit assessments on steel and power generation customers. My first freelance Excel financial modelling assignment was in devising a global mine database for Anglo American using advanced Excel and VBA skills. Also being in my own business I developed a myriad of Excel based solutions to the practical business needs of business owners.
Over the years I have developed my Excel Specialist & Financial Modelling skills to a very high level and include VBA programming, Power Query, Power Pivot, Power Pivot, Pivot Tables, interactive models, charting and dashboard as skills. I now concentrate on doing financial modelling & Excel solutions under my ABN and business name called The Excel Factor.
I think I might be unusual amongst Consultants in that my philosophy is to do the job at hand as well as I possibly can, never compromise the client relationship and let the future take care of itself. It has to be said many consultants do part of the job at hand, leaving another part for future fees. I think if I do a fantastic job for the client there will be even more future work as they have greater confidence that I can solve their next problem on time and within estimate.
I am based in the beautiful Tweed Shire near the Gold Coast QLD with easy access to Brisbane.
Past Conferences & Training
Date | What | Where | Duration | Presenters |
Feb 2019 | Building BI with Modern Excel | Wellington NZ | 2 Days | MVP Ken Puls XLGuru |
May 2017 | Unlock Excel | Brisbane | 2 days | Ken, Puls, Roger Govier, Jon Peltier |
Oct 2016 | MS Access to Advanced Level | Amicron Computing online | na | Richard Rost |
May 2016 | The Excel Summit South | Melbourne | 2 days | arranged by Charles Williams including Bill Jelen, Ken Puls, Microsoft Excel Development team |
Oct 2014 | Power Pivot & Power Query | Brisbane | 2 Days | Matt Allington |
2012 | VBA Programming | Online | na | MVP Chandoo |
2012 | Excel Hero Course (VBA & advanced formulas) | Online | na | MVP Daniel Ferry |
Aug 2012 | MYOB - End of Period Reconciliation & BAS | Brisbane | 1 Day | MYOB |
Jun 2009 | VBA for Excel 2003 Programming | Brisbane | 2 days | ITTS Spring Hill |
Nov 2007 | Excel 2003 - Advanced | Brisbane | 2 days | ITTS Spring Hill |
2007 | Anglo Coal Leadership & Work Model Training | Brisbane | 10 days | In-House |
2006 | Excel 2003 - Intermediate | Brisbane | 2 days | ITTS Spring Hill |
Jan 2004 | Applied Derivatives | Singapore | 2 Days | Paradigm |
1998 | Export Documentation | Brisbane | 1 Day | Australian Institute of Export |
1991 | Rio Tinto Organisation Development Superviser's Course | Brisbane | 2 Days | Rio Tinto |
Connection to Dental Practices
2005 – 2016 I was working directly in our own dental practice ‘Redland Bay Dental Surgery – Toothwise’ with my dentist wife Dr Nupur Hackwood. We sold our practice in Jan 2016 which has freed me to do more Excel for clients.
My observation is most medical or veterinary practices are small businesses with a high volume of patient numbers and high end transactions to work with. They have to manage, analyse and control their practices effectively without access to full time IT support or programming capability. Yes, many have specialist software to help them but even the best has limitations. Some are strong on the patient relationship but weak on the business (transactions) side or have gaps in capability or content of the reports. Some are strong on the clinical side but weak in the patient relationship side.
The same happens in big business with multi million dollar systems. This is where Excel and someone like myself comes in. If the information is exportable, Excel can be used to take this data and create the report you want. It can be used to fill these capability gaps and tailor a solution to what you need right now, today as it is used all throughout the business world.

As a former dental practice owner, John understand the needs of small business.
Coming from a big business background with very advanced Excel skills and being a dental practice owner, I am uniquely placed within the dental industry to devise sound appropriate solutions and processes in all sorts of areas including reporting, budgeting, cash control, debtors control and implementing many Excel based tools (see below) for greater efficiency, control and effectiveness within a dental practice.
In fact, much of this is just as applicable in any medical practices as well as veterinary practices and can be tailored to exactly what you need to save staff time or provide computing capability or control over areas you just don’t currently have.
We used Exact practice management software and also have a familiarity with Dental4Windows and very adept at taking exported raw data or reports from your main system like Exact and using it or manipulating it within Excel for other purposes or reports.
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