Maintaining Confidence, Reliability Through a Combined Financial Statements Audit

Drawing from our prior experiences in setting up and managing organizations and large projects, we know that a strong organizational backbone will allow activities to thrive, while adequately managing risks. The most difficult for a small organization like ours is to have a strong administration and finance backbone while staying agile and lean. In our first years of operation, we outsourced most of our financial management. We learned that even the best external partners will not care as much as we do about being entirely financially compliant, and they don’t have the analytical setup to understand and proactively manage our finances accurately.

The most difficult for a small organization like ours is to have a strong administration and finance backbone while staying agile and lean.

Based on these learnings, we decided in 2018 to invest and bring onboard expert help to grow our Finance and Admin team and set up a strong financial backbone internally. While both time and money intensive, this arrangement has been our best investment yet. It allows us to run a streamlined back office, managed by Wee Kheng Yuen and Joyce Monsees, that supports our operations, allows us to be financially proactive, and sets an example for Flying Labs to follow.

In 2019, we commissioned an Independent Accountant’s Review of our 2018 Combined Financial Statements. This was followed by a full audit of our 2019 Combined Financial Statements in 2020. Being incorporated in a number of states, the audit was based on the highest standards applied, which in our case was the standards for the state of California.

Thanks to the hard work of our Finance & Admin team and the support of the Audit Committee of our Board of Directors, we successfully passed our first Independent Financial Audit of our combined 2019 Financial Statements in June 2020. We showed improved internal controls, operational efficiencies, and proper regulatory reporting and compliance. The 2020 audit allowed us to further implement new accounting standards updates in a timely manner and received operational best practices.

Thanks to the expert team at GRF for making our first audit a highly interesting learning experience for all involved, and for helping us evolve and uplift our practices.

You can find our audited financials here.