This study uses audit file data to analyze the association between the auditors' preliminary assessments of going‐concern and fraud risk and the planning and performance of the financial statement audit. We analyze the association between the above risks and the auditor's assessment of the risk of material misstatement (RMM) within the revenue cycle, and examine whether going‐concern and fraud risk assessments have an effect on the persuasiveness, timing and extent of audit evidence gathered. Our results indicate that both fraud risk and going‐concern risk are significantly related to RMM. Our results also indicate that although the effect of fraud risk is fully mediated by the RMM, moderate going‐concern risk remains significantly related to our proxies for the persuasiveness and timing of audit evidence, even after controlling for RMM.