Short answer. Five days. Article 205 of the Labor Code requires an employer to record a sickness, injury, or death in the logbook within five days from notice or knowledge of the incident, and then, within another five days after that entry, to report to the System any contingency the employer considers work-connected.
What the law says
Entries in the logbook shall be made within five days from notice or knowledge of the occurrence of the contingency. Within five days after entry in the logbook, the employer shall report to the System only those contingencies he deems to be work-connected.
Labor Code, Article 205 — Employer’s Logbook. Read the full provision →
Two separate five-day deadlines
Article 205 sets up two clocks, not one. The first: entries in the logbook must be made within five days from notice or knowledge of the sickness, injury, or death. The second: once the entry is made, the employer has another five days to report to the System those contingencies it considers work-connected. So the full sequence -- from finding out about the incident to reporting it -- can run up to about ten days if the employer waits until the last permitted day at each step.
What the logbook has to contain
The employer must keep a logbook recording, chronologically, the sickness, injury, or death of employees -- names, the date and place of the incident, its nature, and related absences. Entries have to be made by the employer or an authorized official, and only after verifying the contingency or an absence of a day or more. The System can request certification of any logged entry by its entry number, page number, and date, and the logbook itself must be made available for inspection by the System's authorized representatives.
The cost of missing the deadline
Failing to record an actual sickness, injury, or death within the prescribed period -- or giving false information, or withholding material information the employer already has -- carries a direct financial consequence: the employer becomes liable for fifty percent of the lump sum equivalent of the income benefit the employee may be found entitled to, and that amount goes to the State Insurance Fund rather than to the employee. This is a penalty aimed squarely at employers who sit on a workplace incident instead of logging and reporting it on time.
Fraudulent claims add a further exposure
If a claim is later paid out and then found to be fraudulent, and the employer is shown to have been a party to that fraud, the employer must reimburse the System the full amount of the compensation paid -- on top of whatever liability already exists for a missed or falsified logbook entry. Together, the recording deadline and these consequences are meant to keep the employer's own records as an early, reliable source of what happened at the workplace, rather than something reconstructed only after a dispute arises.