yep, precisely. a 0 credit utilization is penalized so you want at least one card to report a small balance when the statement generates. every other card should have its current balance (which includes the statement balance + the balance that has not yet been included on any statement yet) paid. you only need to do this in the month before you apply for credit as utilization has no memory.

the due date for each card is about 5 days before the next statement generates. so on the due date you want to make sure you bare minimum pay the statement balance. to optimize utilization you'd pay the total current balance instead. let's say in May, I spent $50 dollars. that generated a statement on June 6th saying I owe $50 dollars. then in June I spent another $50 dollars. on July 1st, the May statement balance is due but there's also the balance from June on the card. this balance is not yet reporting on a statement so it hasn't been sent to the credit agencies yet. let's say my credit limit is $100. this means that if I pay the statement balance from May in full, my utilization on July 6th will be 50/100=50%. however, if I pay $100 instead, my utilization will be zero. if this is my only card, I might choose to pay $99 instead so that it reports 1% instead of 0% (in reality you want to aim for more like 5% - the zero balance penalty starts to apply under some threshold near 5% but we don't know what it is).

hope that helps! this shit is confusing on purpose so that you fuck it up and wind up paying penalties or hurting your credit score.