i have kubuntu on a asus eee pc netbook that is running great except for a little issue. when i shut down or restart, xfce power manager doesn't startup. The wind up is i notice that i don't have a battery icon on the task bar and i go to preferences >power manager and it says "xfce power manager is not running" and then i click run and I'm all good.

how do i get this to auto start, i googled this issue and the few pages i found say to go to session & start up, however i don't have those options. Is there a systemctl command that will force this to startup when the OS boots?

If you have Xfce then it is Xubuntu that you have there not Kubuntu witch uses KDE, unless you have installed Xfce afterwards.
In the menu click on Settings and then Settings Manager then Session and Startup then in the tab Application Auto Start you can then check the box for Power Manager there, if it isn't in the list then you can add it to the list using the button ADD just bellow.

Regards