Every employee who leaves a company also leaves behind the question of who still has a working key. A badge gets collected at the exit interview, but a physical key duplicated at some point during that person’s employment doesn’t announce itself the same way — it just keeps working in the lock until something changes. Rekeying resets that risk without touching the hardware already on the doors, which is why it’s one of the most frequent commercial calls that comes in from offices, retail spaces, and multi-tenant buildings around the Twin Cities.
Turnover Is the Most Common Reason to Rekey
Staff changes are the single biggest driver of commercial rekey calls, and for good reason — every hire who’s had a key at some point is a key that’s technically still live until the lock changes. A single departure might not justify a rekey on its own, but a pattern of turnover, a termination that didn’t go smoothly, or simply not knowing how many copies exist after years of staff coming and going are all reasons a lock’s actual keys stop matching who should have access. Rekeying resets that count back to zero without replacing hardware that’s otherwise working fine.
Rekey Beats Reissuing Keys That Might Still Be Out There
Collecting keys back from a departing employee feels like it solves the problem, but it only accounts for the keys that get handed back — not the ones that were quietly duplicated at some point and never mentioned. Rekeying sidesteps that uncertainty entirely: new pins go into the existing cylinders, a new key is cut to match, and every key that isn’t the new one — copied or not, returned or not — simply stops working. It’s the difference between hoping every copy came back and knowing none of the old ones open anything anymore.
Interchangeable Cores: Swapping the Guts, Not the Whole Lock
Many commercial buildings use interchangeable core cylinders — small-format (SFIC) or large-format (LFIC) cores that drop into a standard housing and pull out with a control key, rather than requiring a full cylinder disassembly to rekey. That design turns a rekey into a core swap: pull the old core, drop in a new one already pinned to the updated combination, and the door is back in service in minutes rather than the hour or more a traditional pin-by-pin rekey can take per lock. On a building with a lot of doors, that difference compounds fast — a whole floor of IC-core doors can be swapped in roughly the time a handful of standard cylinders would take to rekey the old way.
Scheduling Around Business Hours
A rekey doesn’t have to happen while a business is open and running. Scheduling the work before opening, after closing, or over a weekend keeps the job from interrupting customers or staff, and it’s especially worth doing on a multi-door building where the work takes a technician from door to door across a space people are trying to use. Coordinating a time that fits the business’s actual hours, rather than defaulting to whenever a technician happens to be free, is part of planning a commercial rekey properly.
Rekey Pricing for Multi-Door Buildings
What a commercial rekey costs comes down mainly to door count, since pricing scales with how many cylinders or cores are actually being redone, and to hardware type — interchangeable cores rekey faster than standard cylinders, which shows up in the labor. Whether new keys are being cut for a small staff or a larger one factors in too. A technician can give you a number once they know the door count and hardware on-site, confirmed before the work begins rather than guessed at over the phone.
Keeping Track of Who Has What
A rekey is also a good moment to start, or clean up, a simple key control record — which cores or cylinders exist, roughly how many keys are cut for each, and who’s been issued one. It doesn’t need to be complicated to be useful; even a basic list makes the next turnover a lot less of a guessing game about who might still be holding a working key.
We handle all of this on-site across the metro — see our service areas.
Frequently Asked Questions
How fast can you rekey a 20-door office?
It depends heavily on what's already installed. A building already fitted with interchangeable cores rekeys much faster door to door than one with standard cylinders, since each core is a quick swap rather than a full pin-by-pin rework. Scheduling more than one technician on a large job also compresses the timeline. The honest answer is that a walkthrough of the actual doors tells you more than a general estimate would — worth asking about when you call so you know what to expect for a space that size.
Should I rekey or just install new hardware?
If the existing locks are in good working order and the only issue is who might have a key, rekeying handles it without the cost of new hardware — same locks, new pins, and only the current key works. New hardware makes more sense when the locks themselves are worn, outdated, or you're moving up to a security grade or interchangeable-core system the current doors don't support. A lot of commercial buildings end up doing both over time: rekeying for routine turnover, replacing hardware when it's actually due for it.
What are interchangeable cores, and why do offices use them?
An interchangeable core, often called SFIC or LFIC depending on its format, is a self-contained cylinder that drops into a standard lock housing and comes back out with a special control key, without disassembling the lock itself. Businesses use them because rekeying becomes a fast core swap instead of a lock-by-lock rebuild, which matters a lot on a building with many doors and regular staff turnover. It's an upfront hardware choice that pays off every time the keys need to change afterward.