Device Manager - Battery Status Report
Written by Daan de Waard
Updated at August 20th, 2026
Table of Contents
The Battery Status Report gives you visibility into devices reporting a Low or Critical battery status, whether you want to check a single device, run an ad-hoc CSV export, or get a scheduled fleet-wide view across your full account hierarchy (Distributor, Vendor, Client).
Note
Your user account will need the Device Manager Report permission enabled to run this report. Contact DM support if you can't see it.
For Telematics Guru users, there is an equivalent report that can be run and scheduled from within TG - Partner Battery Level Status Report
Running the Report
To run the report on-demand, go to the Reports tab in Device Manager and select Battery Status from the Battery Reports. The report can be generated as a CSV or HTML download.
Devices that have had their bad or critical flag set the last time they committed data in Device Manager will appear on the report. Once that flag is unset i.e. fresh batteries have been fitted and the device has connected and committed in Device Manager, running the report again will update the list accordingly.
To get this report automatically and at a fleet-wide scale (rather than running it manually each time), it can also be configured to run on a schedule. See Scheduled Reports in Device Manager for how to set up frequency and recipients. The scheduled version can be configured with:
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Start Date / End Date (UTC): the window to check devices over.
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Device Type: scope the report to a specific product, or run it across all device types.
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System Parameter Template: scope the report to devices sharing a specific parameter template, since battery thresholds can vary by template/configuration.
What's in the Report
| Report Column | Description |
| Distributor / Vendor / Client | The account hierarchy the device sits under. (Shown on the scheduled/fleet-wide report.) |
| Product / Serial Number | The device product type and serial number. |
| Battery Status | Low or Critical: see below for how these are defined. |
| Low Since / Critical Since | The date the device first entered that status. (Shown on the scheduled/fleet-wide report.) |
What Does My Battery Status Mean?
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Low: the battery has dipped below the battery good threshold. Exactly when this triggers depends on factors including the device's reporting rate. It is always best to change the batteries sooner rather than later once this status is seen.
- Critical: a brownout has occurred. The batteries will need to be changed as soon as possible.
In the device grid, this is colour-coded: healthy devices show a plain background with a bold green battery icon; Low battery shows the voltage text in red with the battery icon in half yellow; Critical shows the grid row highlighted in red with an empty battery icon, also highlighted in red.
Viewing Individual Device Data
Rather than running the report, you can check an individual device's battery status directly from its device details tab in Device Manager. This shows the current battery status (if Low or Critical), an estimated battery level, and battery consumption breakdown graphs.
Click on below icon for the device you are interested in:
A new window will open with the device details tab. The battery status information, if low or critical and an estimated battery level and battery consumption breakdown graphs are shown.
Why Might a Battery Incorrectly Flag as Critical?
A Low or Critical flag reflects real voltage behaviour observed by the device, but there are a few situations where a device can flag Critical even though the batteries aren't actually depleted:
Battery passivation: Lithium batteries that have sat unused for a while (e.g. in storage, or a device that's been sitting idle since manufacture) can build up a temporary passivation layer. This causes a brief voltage dip under load the first few times the device transmits, which can trip a brownout/Critical flag even though the battery is otherwise healthy. This effect typically wears off with continued use, increasing the reporting/transmission rate for a short period can help it clear faster.
Voltage sag under transmission load: A battery's voltage can briefly sag during the current draw of a GPS fix or cellular transmission, even if it reads fine at rest. If that sag is large enough, it can trigger a brownout/Critical event without the battery actually being close to empty.
Cold temperatures: Batteries in cold conditions have reduced effective capacity and are more prone to voltage sag, which increases the chance of a Low/Critical flag being triggered, particularly during high current-draw events like transmission.
Swapping Batteries Too Quickly: If batteries are swapped out and back in very quickly, the device may not fully power down (onboard capacitors can keep it alive briefly), so the firmware never performs the full re-check of supply voltage needed to clear the flag, even though fresh batteries are now fitted. See below for how to avoid this.
Note this is separate from the estimated battery percentage shown elsewhere in Device Manager, which is a separate calculation to the Low/Critical flags and can occasionally disagree with them (e.g. if the percentage estimate is thrown off by how transmission time factors into the calculation). If a device is showing a low percentage but its Low/Critical flags are not set, that's a percentage-estimate question rather than a battery health issue.
Resetting the Battery Flag
If a device's batteries have been replaced but its Low/Critical flag hasn't cleared, this can usually be resolved with Reset Device Statistics (Device Details > Reset Device Statistics in Device Manager on the Device Details page, or the equivalent async/API call. Contact DM support for OEM WebAPI documentation). This clears the device's counters and the values used in the battery-level calculator, and on current firmware also triggers a re-check of the battery flags. Allow a few update/heartbeats after resetting for the device to clear the flags.
On some devices, the Low/Critical flags are only re-evaluated by the firmware when it reboots, since the flag is held in persistent memory and isn't automatically re-assessed by a stats reset alone. If a flag doesn't clear after a statistics reset and a few heartbeats, try a remote/full device reset as well to force a re-check of supply voltage.
If you're swapping batteries physically rather than resetting remotely: leave the device without batteries for about 30 seconds* before fitting the new ones. A too-quick swap can mean the device's capacitors keep it powered through the change, so it never performs a full power cycle – and the old flag can persist even with fresh batteries fitted. *Barra Core's need 90 seconds!
This behaviour can vary by product and firmware version. If a reset and reboot don't clear a flag you believe is stale, contact DM support.
Read more here: https://support.digitalmatter.com/device-manager/device-statistics
Why Does All of this matter?
A device that runs out of battery stops reporting entirely, which can look identical to a lost or disconnected device until someone investigates. Rather than checking devices one at a time, the scheduled/fleet-wide version of this report lets you (or a distributor/vendor managing many clients) see the whole fleet's battery health in one place, and prioritise field visits for devices that have been Low or Critical the longest.
