You don’t really need to worry too much about your debtor and creditor control accounts, although they are there to track money owed to your from clients (debtor control) and money you owe to suppliers (creditor control).
When a sales invoice is created it makes an entry on debtor control, when it is paid it reverses the entry. In general you can just rely on your dashboard totals for these figures.
If there’s any difference between these control accounts and your dashboard totals it’s usually due to holding funds on client/supplier accounts. In such cases they will appear on your control accounts but not on the dashboard totals, which track outstanding invoice balances.
It’s also worth having a look at the follwing post which includes a nice infographic.
What is the Debtors Control Account for?
I hope that clears it up a bit but please let me know if you have any further questions.