Five minutes of QuickBooks read-only and a few quick questions surfaces what a buyer would pay up for — and discount — in your locksmith business: how much is recurring commercial access-control revenue versus one-time residential and automotive, and whether service and the key accounts run without you. Preview is free; $499 for the full memo.
Enter two numbers for an instant Locksmith ballpark. No signup — the real number comes from your books.
We answer each one from your books first — so you fix the story before a diligence team writes the number.
Residential lockouts and automotive key jobs are one-and-done — break-fix shops 'don't have much to sell.' Recurring commercial access-control service and monitoring revenue (RMR) is what buyers pay a premium for; a book with little or no recurring base is priced as the transactional, re-win-it-daily business it is.
If you run the service calls, hold the commercial accounts, and are the senior tech, a buyer sees key-man risk, not a transferable business. Owner-dependence is the discount they apply hardest — a documented service/operations manager who runs the work without you is the strongest signal the business survives your exit.
Many states license locksmiths and require a bond; the license and bond are tied to the owner or the business in ways that don't always survive a sale. A buyer prices the risk that licensing has to be re-established post-close — and a non-transferable credential is a real deal complication.
If a single property manager, builder, or institutional account is an outsized share of revenue, a buyer prices the risk it leaves — concentration above ~20–25% from one customer is a flagged discount. Key-control and master-key fiduciary responsibility for that account adds risk a buyer underwrites too.
Each lever is sized for a typical $1m–$2.5m revenue locksmith / access-control company, service + install mix — about $200K EBITDA. Same number whether we frame it as “what a buyer discounts” or “what you keep by fixing it.”
Commercial access-control service and monitoring agreements, master-key system maintenance, and scheduled door-hardware maintenance create recurring monthly revenue. RMR is the single biggest lever on the multiple in this trade — once it's a meaningful share of revenue, the business re-rates toward a security-integrator valuation.
adds about 0.4–0.7× to your multiple · usually takes 12–18 months
Promote a service/operations manager with authority over dispatch and the commercial accounts, and document the diagnostic and key-control playbook. A locksmith business that runs without the owner removes the dominant discount buyers apply.
adds about 0.3–0.6× to your multiple · usually takes 12–24 months
Confirming how licensing and bonding transfer (and structuring the deal accordingly), plus clean accrual books with a documented add-back trail, let a buyer underwrite the business with confidence and protect the price from a mid-diligence re-trade.
adds about 0.1–0.3× to your multiple · usually takes 3–6 months
Typical impact ranges blended from lower-middle-market transaction data, sub-$50M M&A databases, and observed consolidator pricing in the $300K–$3M EBITDA band. Directional, not a guarantee — your memo computes your actual numbers from your books.
The metrics buyers grade locksmith & access-control companies on. The diagnostic fills the “your business” column from your actual QuickBooks data.
| Metric | Locksmith benchmark | Your business | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recurring / contracted revenue | ~20% of revenue | Your data | Higher is better — the top multiple lever |
| Gross margin | ~50% | Your data | Pricing and job-costing discipline |
| EBITDA margin | ~13% | Your data | What flows to the bottom line |
| Healthy customer-concentration ceiling | top customer under 20% | Your data | Above it, buyers price the risk |
| Typical industry growth | ~3% / yr | Your data | Beating it can add to your multiple |
| Typical sale multiple | 2.5–4.5× EBITDA | Your data | Where the bidding starts; the levers above move you up |
Benchmarks are blended industry composites, service businesses $1M–$10M revenue, 2026-Q1 — directional, not a precise bar. Your memo measures you against your own books. Connect QuickBooks to fill in your numbers →
The diagnostic arrives as formats you can actually use, plus a private, scoped link to share a curated package with a specific buyer — you decide, card by card, what they see.
A branded slide deck, ready to present — for the buyer meeting, the lender, or the board.
A written diagnostic that holds up with buyers, yours to edit — plain-English summary, how we rebuilt your real earnings, every add-back listed.
Live formulas, not a dead printout — the path from raw profit to your real number, plus the cash-tied-up scenarios a buyer can stress-test.
Locksmithing spans owner-operated break-fix shops and commercial access-control integrators, and the value gap between them is large. Buyers are mostly individuals and search funds using SBA financing for local shops, plus franchise systems (Pop-A-Lock; The Flying Locksmiths, which explicitly pivots franchisees toward access-control RMR) and regional security integrators consolidating commercial work. The ones who pay up want recurring commercial access-control / monitoring revenue, a master-key account base, manager-run service, and transferable licensing. The memo maps which would actually look at a company your size and how each tends to structure the deal.
Read-only, through Intuit. We never write to your books. About 5 minutes.
Just what the books can’t show — agreements, key accounts, who runs the crews.
Buyer-readiness score, normalized EBITDA, value range and top flags — instantly.
The full engine, all three deliverables, the dashboard and the buyer deal room.
Start with the free preview. Pay once — $499 — only when you want the full memo. No subscription, no per-seat pricing.
Most Locksmith businesses in the $1M–$10M revenue range trade at roughly 2.5× to 4.5× normalized EBITDA, with a typical deal near 3.3×. Smaller, owner-dependent shops sit at the low end; larger, manager-run businesses with recurring revenue reach the top. Your actual number depends on your books — that's what the diagnostic computes, blending recent lower-middle-market closings, main-street marketplace sales, and academic M&A survey data.
A locksmith valuation begins where a buyer's QoE team begins: your reported earnings as the starting line. From there, the normalizing adjustments — owner add-backs, family wages, personal vehicles, one-time items — each tied to a specific QuickBooks transaction, producing your normalized EBITDA. Against that we apply a multiple grounded in recent service-trade and security-integrator transactions. The factors that move it up or down: how much is recurring commercial access-control revenue (RMR) versus one-time residential/automotive, customer concentration, whether service runs without you, and whether your license and bond transfer. Every figure traces back to your books — never a revenue rule-of-thumb.
Recurring commercial access-control and monitoring revenue (RMR), a master-key account base, manager-run service and dispatch, a transferable license and bond, diversified accounts, and clean books. The diagnostic scores where you sit on each and shows what moving up would be worth.
Sixty seconds. Four numbers. No signup, no email. Just a real answer.