Going to a "low reporting utilization" payment/spending pattern is actually pretty easy to do. It just takes a little finagling at the beginning, such as making an early or extra payment, to get started, but once you do this, it's possible to maintain it while still making just 1 payment per month.
For my example, let's look at a card that has a due date of the 15th and a statement close date of the 18th. The way most people would use their card, this happens: Let's say the statement cuts with a $500 balance on Jan. 18th, with the payment due on Feb 15th. Then, from 1/18 to 2/11 or so, you run up another $500 in charges, so your balance is around $1000 on 2/11. You pay the statement balance of $500 before the due date. Then you run up another $100 in charges when the 2/18 statement closes. Now you have a $600 statement balance which reports 2/18 and is due 3/15.
Depending on your monthly spend and your credit limit, your utilization will be based on this statement balance. If you have a $10k limit, no problem. But if you have a $1k limit, you're looking at 50-60% utilization. But there's a way to bring this down without making many changes to your spending/payment habits: Instead of paying the statement balance when it's due, pay the entire balance. So, to use our example above, on 2/11 you'd pay the $1000 current balance instead of just the $500 statement balance. Now your 2/18 statement will have just the balance charged after that, the $100 I mentioned, which will put you at a much lower utilization. Come March 11, if you ran up another $500 in charges, you'd pay off the entire $600 balance (the $100 statement balance plus the $500 you charged since then), leaving a zero balance right before the due date.
If you want a zero balance to report, make sure to include pending charges in your payment amount, and then avoid using the card between the time you pay it off and when the statement cuts. Having a 2nd card with a different statement cut date helps with this, since you can just move your daily spend to that card during those few days you have to wait.
This is the approach I started using after my CLDs in January. My $500 limit Mastercard which sees light usage, is the card I let report a $0 balance. I pay the full balance including pending charges a few days before the due date, then avoid using the card until the statement cuts with a $0 balance. My BoA Visa, which is my daily spend card, I also pay the full balance a few days before the due date. With this one, to get the small non zero balance, I'll either leave the pending charges unpaid, or not pay the entire current balance, or put new charges on it if I know they will be small.
My 3rd card, the Chase Amazon Visa, is still too new to have entered the AZEO cycle yet, though it will soon... it just had a statement cut with about 25% utilization, a bit higher than I wanted, but I'll pay that off probably next week, and since Chase cards report mid-cycle zero balances, that card will complete my 3-card AZEO once I do.
