An Employee Left. Who Still Has a Key? A Rekeying Guide for Dallas Businesses

Most small and mid-size businesses in Dallas don’t have a formal key-control policy, which is fine right up until someone leaves on bad terms, a manager can’t say how many key copies exist, or a business simply realizes it’s been years since the locks were touched. At that point the question isn’t whether to rekey — it’s how to do it without disrupting the business for a week.

When rekeying actually matters

Best Locksmith fields commercial rekey calls for a handful of recurring situations: an employee departure, especially an involuntary one; a change in ownership or lease; loss of a master key with no accurate count of how many duplicates exist; or simply a business that has never rekeyed since opening and wants to reset. None of these require replacing hardware. Rekeying changes the internal pins so existing keys stop working, without swapping out the lock body itself in most cases.

Rekey vs. replace

A straightforward pin-tumbler lock can usually be rekeyed in place — a technician removes the cylinder, changes the pin stack to match a new key, and reinstalls it. Replacement becomes the better option when the hardware itself is worn out, doesn’t meet the security grade a business needs, or when a property is moving to a restricted-key system where blanks can’t be duplicated without authorization. Best Locksmith works with Mul-T-Lock and other high-security cylinder lines for businesses that want keys that can’t be copied at a hardware store.

Doing it as part of a master key plan, not a one-off

The mistake we see most often is a business rekeying one door — usually the front — and leaving every other door on the original keying. If the departing employee also had access to a stockroom, a server closet, or a side entrance, that access doesn’t go away just because the front door changed. Before any keys get cut, it’s worth mapping out which doors that person, or that key, actually opened. For multi-tenant or multi-door properties, this is really a master key system question — rekeying is only useful if it’s applied consistently across the hierarchy, not just the most visible door.

What a rekey visit looks like

A Best Locksmith technician will typically walk the property first to identify every exterior and interior door on the affected key, confirm which doors need new keys issued and to whom, and rekey the full set in one visit rather than piecemeal over several trips. For businesses that also want to track who holds which key going forward, we can combine a rekey with a move toward restricted keyways, so future copies require sign-off rather than a trip to any hardware counter.

A practical trigger list

Businesses across Dallas, Plano, Allen, Murphy, Frisco, McKinney and Rockwall generally fall into one of these categories when they call: staff turnover with no key log, a change of ownership or management, an expired lease handoff where old keys were never collected, or routine security hygiene after several years without a rekey. None of these are emergencies in the way a lockout is, but all of them are easier to fix before a key that shouldn’t work still does.

Facilities and property teams juggling this alongside other vendor coordination — landscaping crews like Norfolk Tree Service, cleaning contractors, and maintenance staff — often find it easiest to standardize a rekey schedule tied to lease turnover or an annual review, rather than reacting one departure at a time.

Getting a rekey scheduled

Best Locksmith is licensed, bonded and insured (Texas Lic # B20409) and handles commercial rekeying across the DFW metroplex, 24/7. Call (214) 600-9161 to walk through which doors need attention, or see our full commercial locksmith services.