A novel organic nonlinear optical crystal, bis (4-acetylanilinium) tartrate (B4AAT) has been synthesized and successfully grown by a slow evaporation method using acetone as a solvent at ambient temperature. The single-crystal X-ray diffraction study reveals that B4AAT crystallized into a triclinic system with the noncentrosymmetric space group (P1). The crystalline perfection of the grown crystal was affirmed by the High-resolution XRD study. The characteristic functional groups with vibrational assignments and molecular structure of B4AAT were confirmed through Infrared, Raman and NMR spectroscopic analyses. UV–Vis–NIR spectral analysis of the crystal shows 69% of transmittance with a lower cut-off wavelength at 334 nm. The grown crystal was thermally stable up to 143.39 °C. The laser-induced damage threshold of the B4AAT compound was found to be 15.78 GW/cm2 for 1064 nm Nd: YAG laser radiation. The grown B4AAT possesses the low value of dielectric constant and piezoelectric charge coefficient (d33 = 5.86 pC/N) for the supercapacitor and microelectronics industry. The size-dependent of second harmonic generation efficiency of the crystal was found to be 4.6 times higher than that of KDP. The photoluminescence and lifetime measurements of the molecules in the crystal were studied by Fluorescence spectral analysis. The third-order nonlinear optical activity estimated utilizing the Z-scan method reveals that the B4AAT possesses saturable absorption, negative nonlinearity with self-defocusing and optical limiting effect. The aforesaid results confirm that B4AAT crystal is a potential candidate for optoelectronic and nonlinear optical device applications. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.