What does Commit Check Clear Utility actually do?

I recently found a discrepancy in values between the quantities tab and the cost detail tab within Item inquiry on a few items.

After researching in the Knowledge Base, I came across the following steps to clear out the issue:

  1. Update all transactions in the Sales order, Purchase Order and Inventory Management modules.
  2. Run the IM_CommitCheckClear_Utl utility. 
  3. Run the IM_ClearComittedDataEntry_Utl utility.
  4. Run the period end Negative Tier Adjustment in Inventory management. 
  5. Run the Remove 0 Quantity Tiers utility in Inventory Management.  This is run for the entire company.
  6. Run the Balance Inventory Quantity and Cost utility.  This can be run for specific inventory items, a range of items or all items.  I ran it for the specific items.
  7. Run the Recalculate Item History utility.

At a conceptual level, I understand the IM_CommitCheckClear_utl and IM_ClearCommitDataEntry_utl utilities clear stranded values in the CostCalcQtyCommitted or CostCalcCostCommitted fields in the IM_ItemCost.M4T and IM_ItemWarehouse.M4T tables or in the IM_DataEntryCostCalcCommit.M4T table during Transaction Register updates or previews.

It seems to be a common theme in SAGE where transnational data will be "stranded", "hung up" or "lost".

Could someone help me understand what these utilities do and how it affects inventory/total valuation?

Before running these utilities I took a backup of the company and actually ran them in the test company 1st.  Afterwards I ran the Stock Status, Inventory Valuation and Inventory Trial Balance reports and compared them between the test company and the live company.   The values were the same with exception of the Stock Status.  There was a 4,793 less items on hand in the test company as there was in the live company.  Could this have been a result of the process I performed above?