Here is one I don’t use often and sometimes forget.  So I’ll put it out here.

Normally I do my inserts via .NET or a stored proc and so I do my datetime stamps that way.  What if I do not want to do that, surely there is a way to do it inside the table.  Well, you are right and it is really very easy.  In your table design simply set the default value to (getdate()).

I normally use the visual way of creating my tables so I’ll include a screen shot below.  To show how it is done in code I will paste that after the image.

ALTER TABLE [dbo].[tblMyTable] ADD  CONSTRAINT [DF_tblMyTable_dtImported]  DEFAULT (getdate()) FOR [dtImported]