What I do on a lost-office-keys job
Lost commercial keys are a bigger problem than lost house keys because more people are affected and more doors are in play. The question isn’t “should we rekey?”, if a key is genuinely lost or unreturned, the answer is yes. The question is how, and how disruptive it needs to be.
Single-door lost key (you run a small office, you had three keys, one is gone): rekey the cylinder, cut enough new keys for your team. Flat cylinder-upgrade price plus any additional keys. Done in an hour.
Master key lost (you have a keying scheme where one key opens multiple doors): the whole scheme has to be reset. I’ll walk through which doors were in scope, what the replacement scheme looks like, and whether it’s an opportunity to upgrade to a restricted-key profile where copies can only be made with written authorisation.
Staff member didn’t return their key: functionally the same as a lost key. Treat it that way. I can do the work outside trading hours so the office stays operational during the day.
Planned upgrade: if you’re rekeying anyway because of a loss, it’s often the right time to move to a restricted-profile cylinder (Mul-T-Lock Interactive, Abloy Protec, Kaba Expert). That means keys can only be copied by an authorised locksmith on production of a signed authorisation card, a much better situation than high-street cutting shops handing out copies to anyone with a few pounds.
Pricing is time-of-day call-out plus parts at cost. For multi-door office rekeys, I quote the full job before starting so you know the total.