The investigation of agricultural enterprises functioning under present-day conditions has shown their significant peculiarities compared to enterprises of other branches of national economy. These peculiarities are necessary to be realized and understood in the process of financial activity in order not to make improvident financial decisions, negatively affecting the sphere of material production and contradicting its nature.

Financial potential is the only one criteria of a subject’s financial interests security in agrarian sphere, an equivalent of durability and stability. Nevertheless, it is impossible to state such level of a subject’s financial potential without a system of indices, value of which enable making corresponding conclusions. Assessment of financial potential of agricultural enterprises must reflect their functioning stability and facilities for improvement of their financial provision and of farming in whole, verify the absence or presence of risks and the ability to predict them. Considering the aforesaid the structure of financial resources, meeting the demands of an effective economy, the availability of profitable production possibilities, sources of bankrolls which proportionally satisfy economically substantiated parameters of financing, the resource level of financial potential, meeting international standards, can be accepted as criteria of financial potential.

From the point of financial potential level assessment, determination of the major factors affecting it enabled to define the most important and efficient tools for the formation of financial potential in a time period. The research of financial potential of agricultural enterprises has revealed the number of approaches to its assessment. The generally acknowledged one is the assessment of the level of financial potential of agricultural enterprises based on the “minimum of total loss”.

The integral assessment of the level of financial potential of agricultural enterprises depends on the meeting of strategic financial objectives and potential components tasks, apparent within an economy unit and directly connected with functioning and development of farming. It implies the increasing of the risk (uncertainty) and the price of making financial decisions.

The method of grading the level of financial potential of agricultural enterprises has been proposed, which can be considered as a complex value of its integral index, based on:

- complex index of management efficiency estimation (calculated with consideration of the following indices: return on assets, return on home equity, common return on sales on gross margin, produce profitability);

- complex index of paying capacity and financial stability evaluation, grade (the complex index calculation is based on current liquidity ratio, absolute liquidity ratio, correlation of payable and receivable bills, available circulating assets ratio, home equity mobility ratio);

- complex index of business activity estimation, grade (is formed according to the circulating assets indices, fixed assets, reserves, bills receivable, monetary resources, home equity);

- complex index of market stability estimation, grade (includes autonomy ratio, financial risk, circulating assets mobility, fixed assets mobility and their index);

- complex index of investment attractiveness estimation, grade (is formed basing on ratio of the net avails, index of net profit on shares, re-investment profit ratio, stable economic growth ratio, index of profit margin).

The average index in the branch is taken as a normal, enabling to assess the state of an enterprise compared to the average indices in farming.

Complex indices for assessment of the financial potential level are calculated by the dynamic rating technique. On practice, it demands the introduction of such a notion as “a reference enterprise” with indices, equivalent to minimal norms of enterprise activity efficiency.

Key words: financial potential, finance, farms, integral index, reference company.