The notions of side-effect-freeness and commutativity are typical for probabilistic models, as subclass of quantum models. This paper connects these notions to properties in the theory of monads. A new property of a monad (‘strongly affine’) is introduced. It is shown that for such strongly affine monads predicates are in bijective correspondence with side-effect-free instruments. Also it is shown that these instruments are commutative, in a suitable sense, for monads which are commutative (monoidal).