A rekey on a single front door takes one visit and one cylinder. A rekey across a retail space, a back office, a stockroom, and a loading door means several cylinders that all have to land on the same new cut at the end, and none of it can involve a sign in the window that says closed for the afternoon. That's the practical difference between rekeying a house and rekeying a business, it's rarely one lock, and it almost never has the luxury of downtime.
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The trigger is usually the same one: someone left, and the key they were carrying is unaccounted for. Maybe it was returned, maybe it wasn't, maybe nobody's entirely sure. Either way, the fastest way to stop wondering is to change what that key opens, not to keep guessing about where it ended up.
Rekeying doesn't mean swapping in new locks, it means changing the pin combination inside the existing cylinders so a new key operates them and the old one no longer does. On a multi-door business, the goal is almost always combinating every affected cylinder to the same new cut, so staff carry the one key they always carried and nothing about their daily routine changes except that the departed employee's copy stops working. That takes matching pin stacks across every door being rekeyed, not just picking a new random combination for each one independently.
A retail location generally can't lose its front door mid-morning, but a back office or a stockroom door can usually be worked on before the doors unlock for customers or after the last one leaves. The practical approach is to start with the doors least disruptive to touch, interior offices, storage, employee entrances, and finish with the front or primary entrance last, timed for before opening or right at close, so there's never a stretch where a public-facing door is left without a functioning lock during business hours.
Each pin chamber gets disassembled and rebuilt with a new combination of pin heights, matched to a freshly cut key, and the old pins are pulled out entirely rather than left in place. That's what makes the old key stop working, it's not a new lock, it's the same lock with a different internal combination, which is also why rekeying costs less than replacing hardware outright and why it can usually be done at the door rather than by removing and reinstalling anything.
Rekeying is also the natural point to reissue keys deliberately instead of just cutting a matching replacement for everyone who had one before. A business with five people who used to carry a master-style key to every door might come out the other side with three keys on the new combination and two people routed onto a more limited access level instead, a good moment to ask who actually needs to open every door versus just the one they work in.
A business already running a structured key hierarchy has an advantage here: often only the specific level tied to the departed employee needs to be re-pinned, not every cylinder in the building, because the levels above it were never compromised. A business without that structure, every door on its own independent lock, or all doors sharing one unstructured key, doesn't have that option, and the rekey has to touch every affected cylinder directly to get back to one working key.
Older commercial cylinders get rekeyed the traditional way, the plug comes out, the pin chambers get emptied, and new pins go in one at a time. A business running interchangeable cores has a shortcut: the whole pinned core lifts free with a control key and a pre-pinned replacement core drops in, which turns a multi-door rekey into a series of quick swaps instead of a teardown at every cylinder. It's worth knowing which setup a location has before scheduling the work, since it changes how many doors can realistically be turned around in one visit. Once every cylinder shares the new combination, keys get cut directly from it rather than duplicated from an existing blank, which avoids the slight wear and drift that creeps in when a key gets copied from a copy over several rounds.
The point of a business rekey isn't a new lock, it's certainty about who's still holding a working key. Call (407) 792-1378 to sequence the doors so the location stays open through the whole process.
← All Commercial Locksmith servicesNot necessarily, but leaving some doors on the old combination while others change means carrying two keys until the rest catch up, which most businesses want to avoid for more than a day or two.
Generally yes, by sequencing interior and back-of-house doors first and finishing the primary entrance right before opening or right after close.
That's common, and it's not a barrier, rekeying makes the exact count irrelevant going forward, since every existing key stops working the moment the new combination is set.
A house usually has one style of lock on every exterior door. A business rarely does. A single Orlando storefront can have four or five different cylinder types, installed at different times by different contractors, and each one comes apart differently. Knowing what is on each door before the visit is what keeps a rekey from turning into two trips.
Any of these can usually be pinned to the same key as the others if they share a compatible keyway. When one does not, we can replace just that cylinder with one that does, so the whole location still ends up on one key. A mixed collection of locks is the normal starting point, not a problem.
A rekey makes sense when the hardware is in good working order and the only issue is who holds keys. It does not make sense in a few situations, and it helps to know them ahead of time:
In those cases, the better value is new hardware on that door, keyed to match the rest. We will tell you which doors fall into this group while we are on site, so you can decide on each one instead of replacing everything at once. If a door is being rekeyed because of a break-in rather than a staff change, our lock change after a break-in page covers what else to check on a forced door.
A rekey fixes today's problem. Whether the problem comes back depends on what happens to the new keys. Businesses that rekey every year or two because keys keep disappearing usually have the same pattern: keys are handed out without a record, copies get made at a hardware store, and nobody is sure who has what. A few simple habits change that.
A key stamped "do not duplicate" helps a little, but many duplication counters ignore it. A restricted keyway is different. The blanks are controlled and copies can only be made through an authorized source with the business owner's approval. For businesses with frequent turnover, that change often pays for itself in fewer rekeys. See our high-security locks page for more on restricted systems.
Many Orlando businesses lease space in a plaza, an office building or a mixed-use property. Before rekeying, look at your lease. Some landlords require that they keep a working key to every tenant door for emergencies, fire inspections and maintenance. Some buildings run every cylinder on a master key system, and rekeying a suite outside that system would lock the landlord out, which may break the lease.
The fix is usually simple. If the building has a master system, we rekey your suite within it so your new key works, your old keys stop working and the landlord's master still opens the door. If the landlord simply needs a copy, you provide one from the new set. Either way, a short email to the property manager before the work avoids a dispute later. If you are unsure how a building master works, our master key systems page explains the levels.
Buying an existing business is one of the most important times to rekey, and one of the most often skipped. The seller, their managers, their past employees, their cleaning company and their vendors may all hold keys. A franchise location may also have keys held by a regional office. On the day ownership transfers, the new owner should know exactly who can open the doors.
Plan the rekey for the first day or the first night after closing. Make a list of every door, cabinet, safe and padlock that came with the business, and decide which ones need new keys. Safes and key cabinets should have their combinations changed at the same time. If the seller is staying on for a transition period, give them a key from the new set that you control.
Needs vary a lot by the type of business. Some patterns we see around Orlando:
In each case, the rekey is the same basic job. What changes is how the new keys are divided up and how many levels of access make sense.
A little preparation keeps the work quick and keeps your location running. Before the appointment:
Having the old key for each lock makes rekeying faster, because the cylinder can be opened with its key rather than picked or removed another way. If a key is missing for a particular lock, tell us in advance.
Central Florida weather is rough on commercial locks. Aluminum storefront doors on west-facing plazas get very hot in the afternoon, which can make the deadlock drag in its strike. Wind-driven rain from summer storms gets into rim cylinders and padlocks. Grit and moisture build up inside the cylinder until keys stick. When we rekey, we clean and lubricate each cylinder, which often fixes stiff keys that owners assumed were worn out.
If a storefront door needs repeated force to lock, the issue may be the door alignment or the pivot rather than the cylinder. Rekeying will not fix that, but we can point it out and handle the adjustment. Our storefront door repair page covers those issues. Before hurricane season, it is also worth confirming that every padlock on roll-up doors, shutters and gates has a working key on your new ring.
Many rear doors on Orlando businesses use a panic bar that opens freely from inside and has a keyed rim cylinder or a key-operated dogging function outside or on the bar itself. Those cylinders get forgotten in a rekey because staff never use a key on them. That is a mistake. If a former employee's key still opens the outside of the rear exit, the rest of the rekey does not matter much. Include every exit device cylinder and dogging key in the plan. If a panic bar itself is not working correctly, see our panic bar service page.
If the business uses keypad locks or an alarm keypad at the door, a rekey only solves half the problem. A departed employee who knows the door code or the alarm code can still get in. Whenever keys are changed because someone left, change the codes on the same day. For keypad locks, delete individual user codes rather than sharing one code across the staff, so the next departure only means removing one code. The mechanical override cylinder on a keypad lock should be included in the rekey, since it is often keyed to an old construction or factory key nobody thought about.
Some businesses rekey every time anyone leaves. Others go years without one. The right frequency depends on how many people hold keys and how sensitive the space is. A practical middle ground is to rekey immediately when a key is lost, when someone leaves on bad terms or when a manager with keys to everything departs, and to review the key log once a year either way. Dividing keys into levels, so most staff only carry what they need, means most departures affect only one or two doors rather than the whole location. That structure is the main reason growing businesses move from a single shared key to a planned system.
Searching locksmith near me in Orlando for a house lockout? We are mobile across metro Orlando and quote the price before we come out. Call (407) 792-1378.
ZIP codes we cover in Orlando: 32801, 32803, 32804, 32805, 32806, 32807, 32808, 32809, 32810, 32811, 32812, 32814, 32817, 32818, 32819, 32820, 32821, 32822, 32824, 32825. City services: Orlando Official Website.
